In 1885, a former Catholic
priest, Charles Chiniquy, wrote a book titled Fifty Years in the
Church of Rome in which he made many scandalous allegations against
the Catholic Church, including the accusation that the assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 had been the result of a conspiracy by
the Catholic Church, and that the assassin John Wilkes Booth was a
Catholic who had been corrupted and led by the Vatican to commit the
murder.

Chiniquy, who had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church in 1858,
claimed that "emissaries of the Pope" had promised Booth
"a crown of glory in heaven" for the killing of Lincoln.
According to Chiniquy, the assassination was perpetrated by the Church
in revenge for Lincoln's defense of Chiniquy in a 1856 lawsuit.

Chiniquy's writings are still widely distributed and promoted, in
books and on webpages. The goal of this website is to provide factual
information concerning Charles Chiniquy and
his allegations against the Catholic Church.

(These three articles originally appeared on
Yahoo's Geocities and were preserved by P 9/2009 before Geocities pages
went offline).

AN EXAMINATION OF HIS "FIFTY YEARS IN
THE CHURCH OF ROME" by REV. SYDNEY F. SMITH, S.J.

AN ESSAY ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1908

IF the person who called himself Father Chiniquy had confined himself to
the ministrations of the religion for which he forsook the Church of his
baptism, we might have left him unchallenged to give his own account of
the motives and circumstances of his alleged conversion. But inasmuch as
he has sought to gain popularity and income by wholesale
misrepresentations against the personal character and beliefs of those
with whom he was previously associated, and his books written for this
purpose are still widely used as instruments for the persecution of poor
Catholic working men and working women in the shops and factories, those
connected with him can have no complaint against us for submitting his
past career to a searching examination, even if the result should be to
discover facts not tending to exalt his reputation. So far, indeed, we
have not taken this course, the difficulty of obtaining the requisite
information from distant places having been so great; but so many
piteous appeals have reached us from the victims of this unscrupulous
persecution, that we have seen the necessity of putting the man's story
to the test, and through the kindness of some American and Canadian
friends we have been supplied with some materials which, if they do not
enable us to check his story at every point, suffice at least to show
that he was not exactly the witness of truth.

Before entering on the particulars of his life it will be convenient to
consider the general nature of his charges against the Catholic Church
and her clergy. And here at the outset we discover a very remarkable
development in his allegations. In his earliest biographical effusion,
published by the Religious Tract Society in 1861, he bases his
conversion solely on doctrinal considerations, and so far from bringing
charges against the moral character of the Catholic clergy, he says
expressly that there are in the Church of Rome many most sincere and
respectable men, and that "we must surely pray God to send them His
light, but we cannot go further and abuse them"; nor is there any
charge against their personal character in his Why I left the Church
of Rome, which comes next in chronological order. But it would seem
that the ultra-Protestant palate required something more stimulating,
for in his verbose and voluminous Fifty Years in the Church of Rome
(1885) he tells quite a different story. There he represents himself as
one whom the influences of birth, education, and social connections
attached firmly to the Catholic Church, but whom a series of appalling
experiences as a child, as an aspirant to the sacred ministry, as a
priest, drove in spite of himself to realize that this Church was
utterly unscriptural in her doctrines and corrupt in her morals.
Gradually and sorrowfully he was led to realize that her rulers were
perfectly well aware of this opposition between her teaching and that of
the Bible, and just for this reason strove always to keep the knowledge
of the sacred volumes from her people, forbidding her laity to possess
copies of them, and her clergy to attach to them any meaning save such
as was dictated by a unanimous consent of the Fathers, which was never
obtainable. Gradually and sorrowfully he was led to realize that the
practice of auricular confession meant nothing less than the systematic
pollution of young minds by filthy questions, and that the vow of
clerical celibacy served only to set the priests on the path of
incontinence. Gradually and sorrowfully he was led to realize that the
clergy practically as a whole were drunkards and infidels, whose one
interest in their sacred profession was by simony and oppression to make
as much money out of it as their opportunities allowed them.

Thus Bishop Panet is represented as making the acknowledgement that
"the priests [of the diocese of Quebec] with the exception of M.
Perras and one or two others, were infidels and atheists,"¹
but as finding a strange consolation
in learning from M. Perras that "the Popes themselves, at least
fifty of them, had been just as bad."

Father Guignes, the Superior of the Oblate Fathers, tells him
"there are not more undefiled souls among the priests than in the
days of Lot" (p. 280), that "it is in fact morally impossible
for a secular priest to keep his vow of celibacy except by a miracle of
the grace of God," but that "the priests whom God calls to
become members of any of the [religious] orders are safe." Later he
discovers that, so far from this being the case, "the regular
clergy give themselves up with more impunity to every kind of debauch
and licentiousness than the secular" (p. 308). In Illinois things
were quite as bad, indeed much worse. "The drunkenness and other
immoralities of the clergy there" -- as pictured to him on his
arrival in those parts by a M. Lebel, a Canadian priest who had charge
of the Canadian colonists of Chicago -- "surpassed all [he] had
ever heard or known" (p. 352), and somewhat later he made the
painful discovery that Lebel himself was among the worst of them.

[ ¹ Fifty
Years in the Church of Rome, p. 139. All
subsequent references are to this work except where otherwise specified.]

Nor were the bishops in the two
countries any better. Bishop Lefevere, of Detroit, was a man capable of
taking the teetotal pledge publicly in face of his assembled flock, and
that same evening coolly disregarding it at his own private table; and
his predecessor, Bishop Reese, "during the last years he had spent
in the diocese, had passed very few weeks without being picked up
beastly drunk in the lowest taverns" (p. 347). Bishop Quarter, of
Chicago, is fortunate in not himself coming under Chiniquy's lash, but
the latter assures us that he died poisoned by his Grand Vicar, who
desired thus to prevent the exposure of his own licentious conduct (p.
352). Bishop Vandevelde, who succeeded Bishop Quarter, is on the whole
more leniently dealt with, but "though he was most moderate in his
drink at table" we are assured that "at night when nobody
could see him he gave himself up to the detestable habit of
intoxication" (p. 382). Bishop O'Regan, the succesor of Bishop
Vandevelde, and the prelate who, by force of circumstances, was brought
into the sharpest conflict with Chiniquy, pays for it by being
represented as the incarnation of all that can be odious in human
character; and Archbishop Kendrick is represented as having agreed with
Chiniquy that "the rapacity of Bishop O'Regan, his thefts, his
lies, his acts of simony, were public and intolerable," and
"that unprincipled dignitary is the cause that our holy religion is
not only losing her prestige in the United States, but is becoming an
object of contempt wherever these public crimes are known" (p.
434). Bishop Bourget, of Montreal, is another prelate whose character is
aspersed by this man's allegations. In one place we are assured that
this bishop, when a young priest staying with his Bishop at the Hotel
Dieu in Montreal, was one of two or three priests who so shocked the
nuns that the latter said, "unless the bishop went away and took
his priests away with him, it would be far better that they themselves
should leave the convent and get married" (p. 307). Also, this
ecclesiastic, we are told, when Bishop of Montreal, bade Chiniquy to
allure into a convent a lady who confessedly had no vocation, solely in
order that he might transfer her large fortune into his episcopal
coffers (p. 358); and that for refusing to co-operate in this iniquitous
scheme he determined to ruin him, put up an abandoned girl to make a
false charge against his honour, and then suspend him without allowing
him to defend himself.

This is the substance of Chiniquy's indictment against the bishops and
clergy of the two countries of which he had experience, and in support
of it he brings together numerous facts, or what purport to be such,
full of detail and of long conversations, all so conceived as to suggest
that the greatest part of the iniquities of these people were either too
palpable to need proof, or were attested by the acknowledgements of the
accused persons themselves. That a book of this kind should deeply
impress readers of the Protestant Alliance type is not surprising. But
more prudent minds will note:

(1) that this mass of denunciation was not published till after 1885 --
that is, after a quarter of a century from the date when, with his
apostasy, his experiences of Catholic life from the inside must have
ceased;

(2) that all rests on this unsupported testimony of Chiniquy himself;
and

(3) that the whole tone of the book is that of a man absolutely
egotistic and impracticable, absolutely incapable of seeing any other
side but his own, absolutely reckless in his charges against any one who
should venture to oppose him, and absolutely exaggerated at all times in
his language;

(4) in short, that the author of a story which makes out the Catholic
Church of Canada and the United States, at the date of which he writes,
to be so essentially different from what unbiased witnesses find it to
be within the scope of their own direct observation, is one who paints
himself in his own book as destitute of all those qualities which
predispose a discerning reader to repose confidence in an author's
statements.

To this general motive for distrust others accede as soon as we begin to
carry our examination into the details of the book. Thus in his fourth
chapter he tells us of a secret meeting in the house of one of his
uncles, which was attended by several of the leading inhabitants of
Kamouraska. Its object was to discuss the conduct of the clergy in the
confessional, and the narrator fills six closely printed pages with a
detailed report of the speeches then delivered. He was not invited to
the meeting, but was present at it in the character of an eavesdropper,
hiding in some unobserved corner, his age at the time being ten. We must
suppose, then, that this youthful scribe, with an intelligence beyond his
years, took down the speeches in shorthand, for future use; or rather,
since we are not credulous enough to believe this, we must suppose that
all this account of the meeting was pure invention of his after-years,
and must conclude that the man was capable of such amplifications and
inventions, and of palming them off as truths when it happened to suit
his purpose. And this point about his method being established, we may
surely suspect him of employing it in the similarly detailed stories
with which the book abounds, and in which priests and bishops speak just
as fierce a anti-Catholic might wish them to speak, but quite unlike the
way in which they are found to speak all the world over.

Nor is it a question here of their speaking as bad men rather than as
good men, but of the specific style of the explanations and vindications
of their own doctrines and practices which they are made to give. For
instance, it is known perfectly well from their theological books what
replies priests and other Catholics are taught to give to those who take
objection to their Church's doctrine on the lawfulness of Bible reading
and of interpreting Scripture inconsistently with the "unanimous
consent of the Fathers", on the veneration of our Blessed Lady and
the Saints and of its accord with Holy Scripture, on the practice of
asking and refraining from asking questions in the confessional, and so
on.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that what these Catholic
theological books say on these subjects is altogether unsound and
indefensible, at least the clergy of Canada might be expected to answer
in the language laid down for them in their books, and not in the
language which makes Catholics laugh when some composer of Protestant
fictions puts it in the mouths of his characters. Yet the priestly
characters in Chiniquy's Fifty Years speak invariably like the
latter, not the former. And, just as if we came across a traveller's
account of a country in which the lions brayed and the donkeys roared,
the nightingale cawed and the rooks sang sweetly in the night-time, we
should say that our traveller was either joking or lying; so will any
intelligent possessor of a historic sense say of Chiniquy's paradoxical
account of the sayings and doings of the Canadian and American clergy.

It may be well to give an illustration of what we refer to under this
head, and the following is an apposite one (p. 334). Chiniquy had
preached a sermon on devotion to our Blessed Lady, and had been
congratulated on it by Bishop Prince, then Auxiliary Bishop of Montreal.
During the night he professes to have seen how unscriptural had been his
preaching, and how opposed to the teaching of the Evangelist, who, when
our Lord's mother and brethren stood without, refused to recognize them
as having any claims upon Him. It is a well-known passage, and any
Catholic commentary would, if referred to, have explained that our Lord
wished to teach a lesson to the apostles and their successors in the
ministry, of the devotedness with which they must be prepared to
subordinate all earthly ties to the service of their ministry. Yet
neither to Chiniquy nor to the bishop does it even occur to consider
this explanation, and they talk just as if they were two Protestants.

"How", asks Chiniquy, "can we say that Jesus always
granted the requests of His mother, when this evangelist tells us He
never granted her petitions when acting in His capacity of Saviour of
the world?" At which simple, easy question the bishop is
represented as seeming "absolutely confused", so that Chiniquy
has to help him out by further asking "Who came into the world to
save you and me?" to which the bishop replies sheepishly, "It
is Jesus"; and "Who is the sinner's best friend, Jesus or
Mary?" to which the bishop replies, "It is Jesus ... Jesus
said to all sinners, 'Come unto me', He never said 'Go to Mary'" --
the bishop finally extricating himself from his embarassment by saying
feebly, "You will find an answer to your questions in the Holy
Fathers." Is it likely that a Catholic bishop talked like that? Is
it not more likely that the writer who fabricated what he supposes
himself to have overheard at the age of ten, fabricated this
conversation too, and others like it throughout the book which are
similarly destitute of probability?

Nor is the test of self-contradiction wanting to complete our distrust
of Chiniquy's allegations. He is continually telling his readers that
the Church of Rome forbids the reading of Scripture to the laity, and
even to her ecclesiastical students. Thus when he was a young seminarian
at St. Nicolet he tells us it was the rule of the Collège to keep the
Bible apart in the library, among the forbidden books. But one day,
having obtained access to a copy and surreptitiously spent and hour or
so in perusing it, he afterwards felt bound to tell the director, his
great friend M. Leprohon. The latter, he assures us, was sad, and while
acknowledging his inability to answer his pupil's argumentation, said,
"I have something better than my own weak thoughts. I have the
thoughts of the Church and of our Holy Father the Pope. They forbid us
to put the Bible in the hands of our students." Yet in the story of
his boyhood -- in which he tells us how he used as a child to read aloud
to the neighboring farmers out of a Bible belonging to his family, and
how the priest, hearing of this, came one day to take the forbidden book
away -- he has to acknowledge that this copy had been given to his
father as a seminary prize in his early days.

And -- to pass over such insights as he gives us into clerical life in
the order of the day observed in the presbytery of his first Curé,
where a daily hour was assigned to Bible reading -- we may be content to
set against his later allegations the statements he made on the occasion
of his controversy with Roussy, a Protestant minister, on January 7,
1851.

This date, indeed, should be noted, for it means that this controversy
took place shortly before his departure from Canada to Illinois, and
therefore after the many occasions when, according to his Fifty
Years, he had felt and expressed to personal friends his concern at
finding that the Church feared the Bible and sought to hide it from her
children. And yet on the platform, on January 7, 1851, he talks just as
a Catholic priest would talk, except, indeed, for the repulsive egotism
and browbeating which is all his own. Take, for instance, the following
passage:

"Certain Protestants will repeat that the Church forbids the
reading of the Bible by the people. This is a cowardly and absurd lie,
and it is only the ignorant or the silly amongst Protestants who at
present believe this ancient fabrication of heresy. Some unscrupulous
ministers, however, are constantly bringing it up before the eyes of
their dupes to impose upon them and keep them in a holy horror of what
they call Popery. Let Protestants make the tour of Europe and America;
let them go into the numerous book-stores they will come across at
every step: let them, for instance, go to Montreal, to Mr. Fabre's or
to Mr. Sadler's; and everywhere they will find on their shelves
thousands of Bibles in all modern languages, printed with the
permission of the ecclesiastical authorities. I hold in my hand a New
Testament, printed less than five years ago, at Quebec. On the first
page I read the following approbation of the Archbishop of Quebec: 'We
approve and recommend to the faithful of our diocese this translation
of the New Testament, with commentaries on the texts and notes at the
foot of the pages. Joseph, Archbishop of Quebec.' Every one of those
Catholic Bibles, to be found on sale at every bookseller in Europe and
America in like manner, bears irrefutable witness to the fact that
Protestantism is fed on lies, when day by day it listens with
complacency to its ministers and its newspapers, telling it in various
strains that we Catholics are enemies of the Bible."

This and much more to the same effect may be found in the report of the
discussion between Chiniquy and Roussy which was republished in 1893,
under the title of The Two Chiniquys at the office of the True
Witness.

Again, as regards the question of clerical morality, from time to time
we get from him, as it were through rifts in the clouds of his
inventions, little gimpses into the real life of the Canadian clergy,
which reveal them to us in a by no means unpleasant light. What could be
more edifying than the account given of M. Perras's priestly life (p.
133), or of M. Bedard's (p. 157)? True, he tries to cast some flies into
their ointment, but there is M. Têtu, the Curé of St. Roch, who
was evidently a truly good man, and of whom Chiniquy is contrained to
say that he "never saw him in a bad humor a single time during the
four years that it was his fortune to work under him in that
parish" and "from whose lips an unkind word never
proceeded" (p. 169). And there is the young priest, M. Estimanville,
who in the cholera time at Quebec was introduced by Chiniquy for the
first time to the hospital he was to serve.

"The young priest turned pale, and said, 'Is it possible that such
a deadly epidemic is raging where you are taking me? I answered, 'Yes,
my dear young brother, it is a fact, and I consider it my duty to tell
you not to enter that house, if you are afraid to die.' A few minutes of
silence followed ... he then took his handkerchief and wiped away some
big drops of sweat which were rolling from his forehead on his cheeks,
and said, 'Is there a more holy and desirable way of dying than by
ministering to the spiritual and temporal wants of my brethren? No. If
it is the will of God that I should fail when fighting at this post of
danger, I am ready.' ... He died a few months afterwards" (p. 224).

Nor was this a single case.

"We must be honest" (he writes in another place), "and
true towards the Roman Catholic priests of Canada. Few men, if any, have
shown more courage and self-denial in the hour of danger than they did.
I have seen them at work during the two memorable years 1832 and 1834,
with a courage and self-denial worthy of the admiration of heaven and
earth. Though they knew that the most horrible tortures and death might
be the price of their devotedness, I have not known a single one of them
who ever shrank before the danger. At the first appeal, in the midst of
the darkest and stormiest nights, as well as in the light of the
brightest days, they were always ready to leave their warm and
comfortable beds to run to the rescue of the sick and dying" (p.
166).

These admissions, wrung as it were from the traducer of his brethren,
may serve to show that the clergy of Canada were not so unlike the
clergy elsewhere. That there should be tares among the wheat is always
to be expected, and Chiniquy, as we shall see, was his own greatest
argument to prove that they were not both wanting in Canada and the
United States. But in the first generation of Christian clergy, who
received their Master Himself, the proportion of tares to wheat was one
in twelve. We may trust that it has never been anything like as high
since, nor is there any reason to suppose it was anything like as high
among the clergy in whose ranks Chiniquy lived and worked.

But what about the bishops whom Chiniquy represents as such utter
monsters? We must refer the reader to Mr. Gilmary Shea's History of
the Catholic Church in the United States for an account of the two
bishops of Detroit, Bishops Rese and Lefevre, who were evidently quite
unlike what we might gather from Fifty Years in the Church of Rome.

Nor, as Chiniquy has little to tell against Bishop Vandevelde, need we
say more than that, as we have ascertained from well-informed
correspondents, he was a little weak in his government, perhaps, but was
a thoroughly good and conscientious man, and by no means likely to have
had a habit of secret tippling. Bishop Bourget of Montreal and Bishop
O'Regan of Chicago were the prelates who had to do most of the
unpleasant work in restraining Chiniquy, and were, therefore, his pet
aversions. What is to be said of them? Bishop Bourget, so far being a
harsh, inconsiderate, unscrupulous and mendacious character, was a
prelate who left a deep and lasting impression on the Canadians by
reason of his very remarkable holiness of life. He was a man of the most
delicate charity and tenderness, quite incapable of doing the smallest
injustice even to the most guilty, and when compelled to punish ever
anxious to make the way of penitence and restoration easy for the
offender. Indeed, so eminent was Bishop Bourget for his virtues that his
contemporaries looked forward to the possibility of his being beatified
some day. And we may add that the letters written by him in this
Chiniquy case, of which we have copies now lying before us, all bear out
this estimate of his character. They breathe throughout a spirit of the
most exquisite conscientiousness and charity.

About Bishop O'Reagan, Mr. Gilmary Shea gives us the following facts. He
was born at Lavelloc, in County Mayo [in Ireland], and was educated at
Maynooth. Archbishop McHale made him Professor of Holy Scripture at St.
Jarlath's College. He came to St. Louis in 1849 at the request of
Archbishop Kendrick, to be head of the Seminary at Carondelet. When he
received the Bulls (appointing him to the see of Chicago) he sent them
back, saying that he was a college man without missionary experience;
and when he was ordered to accept, he said: "I accept only in the
spirit of obedience." He began his administration with energy, and
feeling the want of good priests, made ernest efforts to obtain them for
his English-speaking, German and French congregations. He introduced
system, and did much to restore discipline, but his methods caused
discontent, which was fostered by many. Bishop O'Regan had entered
heartily into works for the good of the diocese, and expended large sums
of his own means for it. But, tired out by the opposition of Chiniquy
and some others, he resolved to visit Rome and plead in person for his
release from a burden which he felt to be beyond his strength to bear.
His resignation was eventually accepted, and he was transferred to the
titular see of Dora on June 25, 1858. He then returned to Europe, and
spent the remainder of his life in retirement in Ireland and England. He
died in London, at Brompton, on November 13, 1866, aged 57, and his
remains were carried to his native parish of Confert. Mr. Gilmary Shea
adds: "It may be said of Bishop O'Regan that he was a man in the
truest sense, single-minded, firm as a rock, and honest as gold, a lover
of truth and justice, whom no self-interest could mislead and no
corruption could contaminate. He held fast the affection of many and won
the esteem of all."

So far we have been occupied with the general character of Chiniquy's
accusations, the truth or falsehood of which we have sought to estimate
by applying tests furnished chiefly by his own writings. Probably our
readers will agree with us that the result has been to show that this
person is not exactly the kind of witness who can claim to be taken on
his own valuation, and, apart from an external confirmation which is not
available, can be trusted implicitly. We must now go through the stages
of his life up to the time of his apostasy, to see how far his own
account of it agrees with that of others.

To help us in our task we have for the one side his Fifty Years in
the Church of Rome, which is the fullest presentation he has given
us of his story; and for the other side we have some documents which
have been procured for us by the kindness of a Canadian friend. These
are:

(1) Biographical Notes Concerning the Apostate Chiniquy, a paper
which has been published quite recently: this was drawn up by Monsignor
Têtu, of Quebec Cathedral, a grandson of the Hon. Amable Dionne, who
married one of Chiniquy's maternal aunts (Document A).

(2) A copy of a manuscript belonging to the Archives of the Collège St.
Marie, at Montreal, entitled Manuscrit trouvé dans les papiers de M.
le Chanoine Lamarche après sa mort. This paper is an account and a
criticism of Chiniquy's life, but is defective, the first twenty pages
being missing as well as all that followed the forty-four pages
preserved. From internal evidence the writer is M. Mailloux, a Grand
Vicar of Quebec, who knew Chiniquy very well in his Canadian days, and
was afterwards sent to Illinois to undo the evil lie he had wrought
there (Document B).

(3) A copy of a letter dated March 19, 1857, and addressed by Bishop
Bourget of Montreal to the "Canadian Catholics of
Bourbonnais." It has been transcribed for us from the Courrier
de Canada, a Montreal paper, in which it appeared on April 7, 1857
(Document C).

(4) A paper entitled Explanations of certain Facts misrepresented by
M. Chiniquy in his Letter of April 18, 1857. This paper is also by
Bishop Bourget, and is dated May 6, 1857. It has been copied for us from
the archives of the See of Montreal (Document D).

(5) A number of letters exchanged between Bishop Bourget and others
between the years 1848 and 1858. These have likewise been transcribed
for us from the authentic copies in Bishop Bourget's Register (Document
E).

Charles Chiniquy was born on July 30, 1809, at Kamouraska, a town on the
right bank of the St. Lawrence, some forty miles below Quebec. His
parents were Charles Chiniquy, a notary by profession, and Reine
Chiniquy, née Perrault. His father dying on July 19, 1821, he
was adopted by his uncle, the Hon. Amable Dionne, who, on finding that
he desired to be brought up for the priesthood, sent him to school at
the Little Seminary of St. Nicolet. When he had been there three years a
difficulty arose. "Owing to a misunderstanding between myself and
my uncle Dionne he had ceased to maintain me at college" (p. 66).
This is all that Chiniquy himself tells us about the matter, but
Document A says: "In 1825 Mr. Dionne ceased paying for him, and
refused him admittance into his house, declaring him unworthy of being a
member of his honourable family," and the same document in a note
says: " I [i.e., Monsignor Têtu] can certify that the
Honourable Amable Dionne was an intimate friend of Bishops Plessis and
Panet of Quebec, and of Bishop Provencher of the Red River Missions. The
greatest sorrow of his life was to see his unworthy nephew, who had
always been a bad Catholic, become a bad priest. But that was no fault
of his."

We can gather from these words that the fault of which he was considered
guilty was an offense against morality. But, after all, he was then only
a boy, and two priests, M. Leprohon, the Director of the College, and M.
Brassard, one of the Professors -- thinking that he might change for the
better and deeming that there was promise in him, took upon themselves
the further burden of his maintenance, and so enabled him to continue
his studies and afterwards to pass on to the Greater Seminary. Moreover,
M. Leprohon till his death, in 1844, and M. Brassard till the time of
Chiniquy's apostasy, continued to take a fatherly interest in him, and
the latter to believe in him long after all others had given him up as
hopeless. On September 21, 1833, he was ordained priest by Archbishop
Signaie in Quebec Cathedral, having been incorporated into that diocese.
During the next few years he was assistant priest in three parishes in
succession, but in 1838 he was made Curé of Beauport, a suburb of
Quebec, and it was there that he inaugurated the temperance movement
which brought him into great prominence. In 1842 he was transferred to
his native place, Kamouraska, in the first instance as administrator
under the now aged M. Varin, and shortly after as his successor.

This was the place of residence of his uncle Dionne, who was by no means
glad to have him in the neighbourhood. His own account is that he
signalized his tenure of office at Kamouraska by great doings which won
for him the attachment of the people; still, he cannot deny that there
was a strong party against him. And Mgr. Têtu's Document tells us that,
whilst in that place, "he scandalized many families by his bad
conduct," and that "it is absolutely certain that his uncle,
Amable Dionne, forbade him to enter his house, and that many parents
sent their children to confession to the neighbouring parishes, to
protect them from the baneful contact of their Curé." He remained
at Kamouraska till 1846, when one Sunday in September he astonished the
congregation by announcing that he was leaving the place to join the
Novitiate of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate at Longeuil. What was the
reason?

In his Fifty Years he tells us that the ghastly spectacle of an
all-pervading priestly immorality made him desire to fly to a place of
refuge where he was assured it did not enter (p. 280). In his
announcement to his people during the High Mass -- we learn from M.
Mailloux (Document B), who tells us he has good authority for what he
says -- he declared that he had long felt drawn to the religious life,
but had resisted the call, which he could do no longer; besides it was
bad for his soul to be so loved, honoured, and venerated as he was by
his flock at Kamouraska. It was whispered, however, that there was
another reason of a different kind which had most to do with the sudden
change. "In 1846," says Document A, "tradition relates
that he was caught in the very act of a sin against morals, and was
thereupon obliged to leave the diocese of Quebec." This document
acknowledges that the archives of Archbishop's House in Quebec contain
no official document regarding the crime (which, if Chiniquy by leaving
at once avoided a formal trial, there need not have been). But that
there was some ground for the suspicion is implied in allusions to it in
a private letter contained in Document E. On May 21, 1848, his faithful
friend, M. Brassard, always so difficult to convince of the faults of
his protégé, wrote to Bishop Bourget of Montreal a letter in
which he begs the bishop to allow Chiniquy to be his locum-tenens
for a short time at Longeuil, and, whilst endeavouring to forestall the
bishop's probable objections, says: "I have reason for thinking
that his bad conduct [mauvaise histoire] at Kamouraska is only
known to his superiors and perhaps to one or two priests, for my brother
the doctor, an intimate friend of the late J. Bte. Tache and of M.
Dionne, the sworn enemies of M. Chiniquy, told me two years ago that
these gentlemen could not refuse M. Chiniquy a certificate of morality,
and that he himself, at that time a sworn enemy of priests, had only to
reproach him with an excess of zeal. Besides, it seems to me that M.
Chiniquy has paid heavily for his fault."

For whatever motives, he joined the Oblates at their house at
Longeuil, in the diocese of St. Hyacinthe, and at the time they seem to
have thought themselves fortunate in the acquisition of so famous a
preacher, "the most eminent priest in the diocese of Quebec,"
as the Père Honorat described him to M. Mailloux, (Doc. B). But they
soon had occasion to change their minds about his fitness for their
life, and he parted with them -- or they with him -- after a thirteen
months' sojourn under their roof. According to his own account
"when he pressed them to his heart for the last time, he felt the
burning tears of many of them falling on his checks ... for they loved
him and he loved them " (p. 312). And yet, as M. Mailloux tells us
in his Notes (Doc. B), "he carried away with him from the
Oblates a paper in which he painted them in the worst colours," a
paper which M. Mailloux, to whose house he went that some day,
"refused to receive from his hands, accompanying his refusal with
words which M. Chiniquy would not be able to forget." What the
nature of this portraiture of the Oblate Fathers - a portraiture in the
truth of which M. Mailloux evidently disbelieved - may have been, we may
perhaps judge from what he says about them in his Fifty Years (p.
306).

Now that he was free from the Oblates his natural course was to return
to his own diocese of Quebec, and ask for another post. But M. Mailloux
tells us that "to give him one there could not be thought of."
Apparently that diocese had had enough of him, either because of the
circumstances known to them in connection with his leaving Kamouraska,
or because of his general intractability.

Nor would the Bishop of Montreal give him a fixed post, and he was
forced to seek hospitality with his old friend M. Brassard, then Curé
of Longeuil, the parish in which was the Oblate House he had just
quitted. M. Brassard suggested that he should give up the idea of
stationary work, and devote himself wholly to temperance missions, and
for this he managed to obtain permission from Bishop Bourget.

It was in this work during the next four years that Chiniquy acquired
what was certainly the best distinction of his life. He was most
extravagant in his language and reckless in his statements, so much so
as to elicit from Mgr. Bourget some prudent admonitions. But he had
undoubtedly a gift of fiery though undisciplined eloquence and could
appeal with effect to the sensibility of his hearers. Nor, though the
effects, according to his own acknowledgements, were not as lasting as
they might have been had he been more solid and prudent in his advocacy
and had he relied more on spiritual and less on merely secular motives,
did he fail to do an amount of good to which even those whom he most
abused generously testify. Thus M. Mailloux writes of him at this time
(Doc. B): "No one in the country can deny that by his sermons on
behalf of temperance he has dried many tears; he has brought back peace
and happiness to a great many families; he has raised from the gutter
many thousands of his unfortunate countrymen; and has set a mark of
dishonour on the mania for drinking and getting intoxicated at weddings,
meals, family feasts, friendly gatherings, in short in the social
relations of the Canadians."

The year 1851 now drew on, and it proved to be an eventful year for
Chiniquy's fortunes. According to his own account (p. 345), he received
from Bishop Vandevelde of Chicago a letter dated December 1, 1850, in
which, addressing him (on the envelope) as the "Apostle of
Temperance," he invited him to abandon Canada and put himself at
the head of a vast immigration of Canadians which the Bishop wanted to
draw into the as yet uncolonised parts of Illinois, south of Kankakee.
In this way they would be preserved from the temptations of the cities
and their Protestantism, and would be kept together in communities
apart, and so become one day a great political force in the United
States. Only, the proposal was to be kept for the present a secret, as
the Canadian bishops in their selfishness would oppose a movement,
however beneficial in itself, which could not but reduce the population
of their own parishes.

Whether Bishop Vandevelde ever wrote such a letter may be doubted, for
the style as Chiniquy gives it in his book is suspiciously like his own,
nor is it likely that the bishop would have made this discreditable
request for secrecy to the prejudice of his episcopal brethren in
Canada. Still, it is true that the Bishop of Chicago did wish, not to
entice Canadian colonists into his diocese, but to divert those who were
streaming in unasked, from the cities to the new lands to the south, and
that he wanted some Canadian priests to take the spiritual charge of
them. But so far from wishing to keep this desire secret from the
Canadian bishops, he had written a letter - the text of which is before
us (Doc. E) - on March 4, 1850, to Mgr. Bourget of Montreal. In it he
lays his trouble before that prelate, and begs for a Canadian priest or
two in most moving terms. Possibly it was as the result of this letter
that M. Lebel, of Kamouraska, was sent, and so came to be stationed in
Chicago when Chiniquy afterwards arrived.

Anyhow, there is no mention of Chiniquy in this letter from Bishop
Vandevelde to Bishop Bourget. He went, however, in May, 1851, to
Illinois to give a temperance mission to the Canadians there, and took
with him a letter from Bishop Bourget, dated May 7, 1851, in which the
latter asks Bishop Vandevelde to "regard M. Chiniquy as his own
priest all the time he is doing work in his diocese," adding, in
the humble and tender tone which characterizes all the letters of that
truly saintly man: "I trust that his fervent prayers will draw down
upon his ministry the copious benedictions of Heaven, and that I myself
may experience some of the fruits of them, I who am the last of
all."

It would be a mistake, however, merely from this expression of hope that
Chiniquy's prayers might be fruitful, to conclude that the bishop was
altogether at ease about him. He wrote him a letter, likewise dated May
7, 1851 (Doc. E), in which he gives him some counsels - namely:

(1) take strict precautions in your relations with persons of
the opposite sex;

(2) avoid carefully all that might savour of ostentation, and the
desire to attract attention; simplicity is so beautiful and lovable a
virtue;

(3) pay to the priests of the country the honour due to their
ministry; the glory of God is the best recompense of an apostolic
man.

That the last two of these counsels were given in view of Chiniquy's
personal temperament is sufficiently manifest. That the rest was also,
Chiniquy himself must have understood, since in his letter back to the
bishop, dated May 13, 1851 (ibid), he writes: "I will not
end without asking your lordship to let me be the first told of it, when
detraction or calumny casts at your feet its poisons against me. You
cannot believe, Monseigneur, how much harm, doubtless without wishing
it, you have done to my benefactor and friend, M. Brassard, by confiding
to him in the first place certain things which for his happiness and
mine he should never have known. If I am guilty it seems to me I ought
to bear the weight of my iniquity. And if I am innocent, and it is
calumny which is pouring out its poisons over my soul, God will give me
the strength, as He has done already in more than one circumstance, to
bear all and to pardon all. But let these empoisoned darts wound my soul
only, not that of my friend."

These are fair-sounding words, doubtless, and might be the words of an
innocent man. Whether they are so or not we can only judge by taking
them in connection with what else we can get from independent sources.
But we quote them now as testifying that "in more than one
circumstance" Chiniquy had been suspected, and, as Bishop Bourget
apparently thought, not always without ground. Suspicion is not the same
as conviction, but we shall hear more presently of Bishop Bourget's mind
on the subject. Still, it is a point to notice, even at this stage, that
Chiniquy should have been so unfortunate as to excite suspicions of the
same character in so many independent quarters. His uncle Dionne, and
therefore some of his school-masters, had suspected him in this way in
his youth: the diocesan authorities of Quebec had so far suspected him
as to refuse him further work in that diocese: and now we have Bishop
Bourget entertaining similar suspicions of him.

Nor can we in this connection leave out of account another thing that
may, perhaps, throw a little light on the unpleasantness of his visit to
Detroit, which took place just at this time, namely, whilst he was on
the way to Chicago. We have already heard his own version of the contretemps
which caused him to hasten his departure from that neighbourhood (p.
349), but an American friend assures us that a version of another kind
was given him by the late Very Rev. P. Hermaert, formerly Vicar-General
of Detroit. That version is that Chiniquy, who used to visit Detroit on
his temperance mission from time to time, had been complained of to the
bishop for his offensive attentions to the daughter of a respectable
family. During one of his visits he found that the bishop was going to
call him to account for his misconduct, and he hastened away before the
bishop could return to the city.

He arrived at Chicago on this temporary visit in June, 1851, and went on
to Bourbonnais. But he was back again by the middle of July, and on
August 13th published in the Canadian papers a glowing account of the
prairies of Illinois, assuring the Canadians that, unless they were
quite comfortable at home, their best course was to go there to settle,
which they could do with a certainty of immediate comfort if they only
had two hundred dollars with them to start with (p. 354).

This letter caused a great stir, and induced a great many young men to
respond to the advice, but at the same time aroused much indignation
among their pastors, who saw, what the result proved to be the case,
that the scheme was wild, and that famine rather than speedy prosperity
was to be anticipated for those who were caught by it. Chiniquy did not,
however, indicate in this public letter that it was part of the scheme
for him to be at the head of the emigration, as probably it was not at
that time, though it looks as if he were working up towards such an
eventuality.

In the account in his Fifty Years, Chiniquy gives the readers to
understand that he was going to Illinois in response to an invitation
prompted by a sense of his merits, and that he was going in a spirit of
generosity, and at great sacrifice to his own cherished objects. "I
determined (he says) to sacrifice the exalted position God had given me
in Canada, to guide the footsteps of the Roman Catholic emigrants from
France, Belgium, and Canada towards the regions of the West in order to
extend the power and influence of my Church all over the United
States" (p. 353). We have our doubts, however, whether his
departure for this new sphere of work was so entirely spontaneous, and
even whether it was in response to any invitation at all, and not rather
because he had begged to be allowed to go, his position in Canada being
no longer tenable. Let us see.

In September, 1851, a very unpleasant thing happened to him. "I
found," he says, "on September 28, 1851, a short letter on my
table from Bishop Bourget, telling me that, for a criminal action, which
he did not want to mention, committed with a person he would not name,
he had withdrawn all priestly powers and interdicted me" (p. 363).
He went "two hours later" to see the bishop, to assert his
entire innocence, and to ask for the crime to be stated and the
witnesses made known, so that he might meet them face to face and
confute them. But this, he tells us, the bishop sternly and coldly
refused to do. Then, after taking counsel with M. Brassard, he went off
that night to the Jesuit Collège of St. Marie, at Montreal. It was to
make "an eight days' retreat," and likewise to have the
"help of [Father Schneider's] charity, justice, and experience in
forcing the bishop to withdraw his unjust sentence against [him]."
He represents Father Schneider as helping him cordially, and, as his (Chiniquy's)
reflections made him suspect that his accuser was a certain girl whom
shortly before he had turned away from his confessional, believing that
she had come to entrap him, Father Schneider had the girl found and
brought to the Collège.

There, in Father Schneider's presence, and under the influence of
Chiniquy's firm cross-examination, she owned that "he was not
guilty," but that she "had come to his confessional to tempt
him to sin," and that it was to "revenge [herself] for his
rebuking her that she had made the accusation." This was on the
third day of his retreat, and therefore on October 2nd, a date we may
find it convenient to remember. When the retreat was over, he went back
to the bishop to whom he had already sent a copy of the girl's
retraction. The bishop, he says, fully accepted it as clearing his
character, and as proof that he had nothing against him gave him a
"letter expressive of his kindly feelings," and also a
"chalice from [his] hands" with which he might offer the Holy
Sacrifice for the rest of his life.

It must be clearly understood that this is Chiniquy's account of what
happened, and that he first gave it, not at the time of the occurrence,
but nearly six years later, in a letter dated April 18, 1857, which was
addressed to Bishop Bourget from St. Anne's Kankakee, and was published
in the Canadian press (p. 526). Until then nothing had been publicly
known about the story of this girl. The occasion of this letter being
written arose out of the schism which by that time Chiniquy had stirred
up among the French Canadians in Illinois. We shall understand its
character better presently; for the moment it is enough to say that
Bishop Bourget had thought it necessary to undeceive these poor French
Canadians by revealing to them some of Chiniquy's antecedents.
Accordingly, when at the beginning of 1857 some of them, who had
renounced their momentary schism, sent him a consoling letter to
announce the fact, he replied on March 19, 1857, by a letter (Doc. C)
addressed "to the Canadian Catholics of Bourbonnais" which
letter "was read out in the Bourbonnais Church on Passion Sunday,
March 29th" (of that year). We shall have to refer to this letter
again afterwards, but must give a long extract from it now.

"M. Chiniquy sets himself on another pedestal to capture
admiration, by pretending that God has made him the friend, the father,
and the saviour of the emigrants. To judge from these pompous words one
would have to believe that he only quitted Canada for the grand work of
looking after the thousands of Canadians scattered over all parts of the
vast territory of the American Union. But here again I am going to
oppose M. Chiniquy with M. Chiniquy, for I suppose that, even if he
refuses to believe the words of the bishops, he will at least believe
his own. I am going to give an extract from a letter written by this
gentleman, but that its nature may be the better understood, I should
say that on September 27, 1851, I withdrew from him all the powers I had
given him in the diocese, for reasons I gave him in a letter which he
ought to have preserved, and which he may publish if he thinks that I
have unjustly persecuted him. Under the weight of this terrible blow he
wrote to me on October 4th following this letter: --

'Monsignor, tribulations surround me on all sides. I perceive that I
must take the sad road of exile, but who will have pity on a proscribed
man on a foreign soil, when he whom he had looked up to as his father
has no longer a word of mercy for him?... As soon as my retreat is
finished I shall go and embrace my poor brothers and mingle my tears
with theirs. Then I shall bid an eternal farewell to my country; and I
shall go and hide the disgrace of my position in the obscurest and least
known corner of the United States. If, when my retreat is ended, I may
hope to receive the word of mercy which you thought it necessary to
refuse me yesterday, let me know for the sake of the God of mercy, and
gladly will I go to receive it before setting out. It will fall like
balm on my wounded soul, and will sweeten the rigours of exile.'

It was under these distressing sensations and in these painful
circumstances that he decided to preach the Canadian emigration."

Our readers will note several things about this letter. First, it was
written From St. Marie's Collège while he was still in retreat under
Father Schneider, and on October 4th - that is to say, two days after
the supposed visit and retraction of the unnamed girl.

And yet there is not in it a word of reference to this retraction, nor
is what he does say consistent with that story - for Chiniquy certainly
does not write as if he felt confident that the bishop would now
acknowledge his innocence and reinstate him. Secondly, the letter shows
that he was going reluctantly to Illinois, and (so far as he knew then),
not to preach, but to hide his disgrace in obscurity. Thirdly, the whole
tone of the letter is one of a man who pleads for mercy, not of one who
protests his innocence. Fourthly, the circumstances under which it was
written imply that he was professing, even if he did not feel, a hearty
repentance for an offence committed; since it is evident Bishop Bourget
deemed him guilty, and that being so, neither would he have removed the
suspension, nor Bishop Vandevelde have accepted him for his diocese,
unless he had professed repentance. Fifthly, two other contemporary
letters that are before us (Doc. E) point in the same direction. For on
October 6th Bishop Bourget wrote to Chiniquy, while still in retreat at
St. Marie's, a letter which is apparently the answer to Chiniquy's of
October 4th. It breathes the same spirit as all Bishop Bourget's
letters, and the reader may judge if it is that of an intolerant despot:

"Monsieur, I am praying myself and getting others to pray for you,
and my heart is not so deaf as you appear to think. My desire is that
the most sincere repentance may penetrate down to the very depths and to
the innermost parts of your heart. I pray for this with all the fervour
of my soul, and if I am not heard it will assuredly be because of my
innumerable infidelities. O! that I could be free to weep over them, and
to bury myself for ever in some Chartreuse, under one of the sons of St.
Bruno, whose happy and holy feast the Church keeps to-day."

In this letter the Bishop makes no reference to Chiniquy going to the
United States, probably because that project was not as yet arranged.
But M. Brassard, on hearing of the misfortune of his protégé,
took advantage of Bishop Vandevelde's presence at the time in the
neighbourhood, and besought that prelate to give him a chance of
retrieving himself.

A letter from Bishop Vandevelde to Bishop Bourget was a result of this.
It is dated "Troy, October 15, 1851," and contains the
following passage, the only one of interest to us now: "After all
the instances made by M. le Curé de Longeuil (M. Brassard), and the
promises of his protégé, I consented to give the latter a trial
on condition that he got an exeat from Mgr. Bourget exclusively
for the diocese of Chicago" (Doc. E).

It will be admitted that these various letters throw on the episode of
September 25, 1851, a light somewhat different from that in which it
appears in Chiniquy's own published account above given, and there will
be something further to say on the matter presently. But we have heard
Chiniquy appeal to two testimonials of esteem, a letter and a chalice,
which the Bishop gave him as a means by which he might always be able to
vindicate his character in reward to the charge brought against him by
this girl. Let us now investigate this point.

The letter is a letter written by Bishop Bourget in response to Bishop
Vandevelde's stipulation that Chiniquy, before he could accept him, must
have an exeat for the diocese of Chicago. It runs as follows (p. 528):
-—

Montreal, October 13, 1851.

The Rev. Charles Chiniquy.

Sir,—

You ask my permission to leave my diocese, to go and offer your
services to the Bishop of Chicago. As you belong to the diocese of
Quebec, I think it belongs to my Lord the Archbishop to give you the
dismissal you wish. As for me I cannot but thank you for your labours
amongst us, and I wish you in return the most abundant blessings from
Heaven. You shall ever be in my remembrance and in my heart, and I
hope that divine Providence will permit me at a future time to testify
all the gratitude I owe you.

Meanwhile, I remain your very humble and obedient servant,

+Ignatius, Bishop of Montreal.

Chiniquy describes this letter as a "testimonial of esteem"
(p. 528), and again as "a perfect recantation of all he had said
and done against me" (p. 370). Perhaps an undiscerning reader will
be disposed to agree in that estimate of its language; but a Catholic
acquainted with the style of an exeat, or permission to leave one
diocese for another, will rather take it as a proof of Chiniquy's
insincerity that he should thus represent it, for we may be sure he knew
better what was significant about this particular document. The
complimentary words refer to the results he had attained by his
temperance preaching, and it is in keeping with Bishop Bourget's
character that, in his desire to say the best he could of the
unfortunate man, he should give generous recognition to what stood to
his credit.

As he himself says (Doc. D) on this point, "We said nothing too
much in adding that we protested to him that the diocese of Montreal
would never forget his labours for the establishment of temperance. But
all this proves that if we refused faculties to M. Chiniquy, it was
solely for a motive of conscience, and for the good of the souls for
whom we shall have to answer one day before God."

But what is really significant about this "testimonial of
esteem" is that it contains not a word of testimonial to Chiniquy's
personal integrity. There is generally a printed form for these exeats,
with space left to fill in names and anything extra the bishop may think
fit to add; and that there was such an one then in use in the diocese of
Montreal may be seen from the exeat Chiniquy gives as having been
issued to him about a year previously (p. 324). There, in the printed
part, we have the phrase "[Charles Chiniquy...] is very well known
to us, and we regard him as leading a praiseworthy life in consonance
with his ecclesiastical profession, and bound by no ecclesiastical
censures so far as is known to us."

But in the "exeat" of October 13, 1851, there is a
significant omission of any such attestation of personal character as
would certainly have been inserted had it been possible to give it
truthfully. And the Archbishop of Quebec, who, as Mgr. Bourget says, was
the prelate whose exeat was needful, seems to have given it on
October 19th, in response to the solicitations of Mgr. Bourget and M.
Brassard, but with similar omissions. For Bishop Bourget, in forwarding
it to Mgr. Vandevelde on October 18th (Doc. E), speaks of it as
"not altogether in conformity with your desires," and Mgr. Têtu
(Doc. A) says, "The Bishop of Quebec gave him an exeat for
the diocese of Chicago without a single word of recommendation." So
much in correction of the false construction which Chiniquy puts upon
Bishop Bourget's exeat.

The construction he puts upon the gift of a chalice is not less
misleading. "The best proof," he says in the letter written to
Bishop Bourget on April 18, 1857, "that you know very well that I
was not interdicted by your rash and unjust sentence is that you gave me
that chalice as a token of your esteem and of my honesty" (p. 529).
It proved nothing of the sort.

Chiniquy had professed, whether sincerely or not, that he was truly
sorry for the offences which had led to his suspension, and though
Bishop Bourget did not feel justified in giving him further employment,
Bishop Vandevelde, who was sadly in want of priests, was inclined to
give him another chance. Accordingly the suspension was taken off him
and, as he was about to start an entirely new mission, nothing was more
natural than that Bishop Bourget should give him a chalice -- not,
indeed, for himself, but for the mission about to be started and in need
of sacred vessels.

So far these contemporary letters convict Chiniquy of untruthfulness,
and this may dispose us to doubt whether it is true that, when
suspending him on September 28th, Bishop Bourget refused to tell him
either the nature of the crime imputed to him or the name of the
accuser. Be it recollected that in Bishop Bourget's Letter to the
Canadians of Bourbonnais (Doc. C) he says that he suspended Chiniquy
"for reasons stated in a letter which he must have kept and which
he may publish if he likes."

Chiniquy's reply to this challenge in his letter to the papers of April
18, 1857, was by bringing forward his story of the girl coming to his
confessional, and one would like to know what the Bishop's comment on it
may have been. We can have it, for the Bishop, who naturally could not
engage in a newspaper controversy with a suspended priest, thought it
well that his clergy should know the true facts now that Chiniquy was
endeavouring to misrepresent them.

Accordingly he drew up the paper we have called Doc. D, and of which we
have before us a certified copy taken from the archives of the diocese
of Montreal. It is entitled Explanations of certain Facts
misrepresented by Chiniquy in his Letter of April 18, 1857, and is
dated May 6, 1857. It begins with the words, "These explanations
are confided to the wise discretion of the priests, so that each may
make such use of them as he thinks desirable." There will then be
no impropriety in our quoting from them at this distance of time. The
following passage bears on the point now before us:

"M. Chiniquy pretends that we did not tell him for what crime we
withdrew his faculties. This is false, for we told it to him with all
possible distinctness (en toutes lettres) in our letter of
September 29th [? 27], 1851, which nevertheless he cites as if it were
to his advantage.

"He pretends that we refused him all means of justifying himself.
To this we reply that our invariable practice has been not to proceed
canonically against any one whatever except when the accusers were
resolved to sustain their accusations under oath and in the presence of
the person they accuse. If M. Chiniquy desires to appeal to the
Archbishop of Quebec, or to the Pope, he will find us perfectly prepared
to satisfy him on this point.

"As to the incident of the poor girl whom he brings on the scene,
it is so disadvantageous to him that he would have done better for his
own credit to be silent about it. However much it costs us we will
explain about this incident, as it is the sole argument on which he
relies to create the impression that the bishops are tyrants who oppress
and condemn their priests without a shadow of justice. Some time after
the culpability of M. Chiniquy had been clearly demonstrated to us a
certain girl came to depose against him, who said she would feel an
intense repugnance to be confronted with him. This testimony therefore
could not, in conformity with our ordinary method of proceeding, enter
into the evidence against him. So we contented ourselves with telling
this gentleman that, over and beyond all that had been deposed against
him, a certain girl had quite recently complained of him.

"Now see what M. Chiniquy does. He confines himself to this fact
alone, sends for the girl and gets her to retract. To all this bit of
scheming (manège) we replied by pointing out the contradiction
between M. Chiniquy's words and his actions, saying to him: 'You
pretended that you did not know this girl when I refused to name her to
you. How, then, was it so easy for you to find her and make her
retract?' And to this he had nothing to reply at that time. Hence
what he says now (in 1857) about this girl, namely, that it was she who
wished to tempt him; that it was in vengeance that she had accused him,
and that he had been able to discover her by means of a certain
individual whom he had remarked exchanging a few words with her, is a
story which any sensible man will see is made up after the event.
Moreover, this girl afterwards confirmed her first deposition, under
oath, and it was certainly not from us that she received one hundred
dollars for that if indeed it is true at all that she was paid."

We can judge now what were the real
motives that caused M. Chiniquy to abandon Canada for Illinois, and
whether he has stated them truthfully. Probably our readers will
consider that he has not, and that, on the principle "false in one
thing false in all," he has created a presumption against the truth
of any future allegations he may make, those only excepted which are
confirmed by independent witnesses. Keeping this presumption in mind, we
must pass on to consider his life in Illinois.

He arrived at Chicago towards the end of October, 1851, and was at once
sent on by Bishop Vandevelde to a district some sixty miles south of
Chicago. This was the district of Bourbonnais, and there he proceeded to
build a church and found a mission at St. Anne, a place some ten miles
south of the town of Bourbonnais, where one had been founded already and
was under the charge of a M. Courjeault.

Later, he tells us, and doubtless correctly, he founded two other
missions further south still, one at l'Erable, one at St. Marie's in the
county of the Iroquois. But St. Anne's was his centre of action and
place of residence throughout. There he built his first church and
gathered round him his chief congregation of Canadian settlers. The
first four or five years of his life in those parts were marked by
various quarrels with neighbouring priests, all of whom he sets down as
despicable blackguards.

But this period we must pass over with just a mention of the charge
brought against him by some of his neighbours of burning down the church
at Bourbonnais on June 5, 1853, with the motive of collecting money from
Canada for the rebuilding fund, which he afterwards misappropriated. M.
Mailloux, in his letter of March 28, 1858 (Doc. A), to Bishop Smith,
then administrator of Chicago, states that "this charge was made
before witnesses in the presence of Bishop O'Regan," and that
"Chiniquy never exonerated himself from it." And Bishop
Bourget refers to it in his letter to Chiniquy himself of November 21,
1853 (Doc. E): "I will tell you now that the report which is
current here [in Montreal] is that money sent you from Montreal for your
churches does not reach its destination, but is kept back by you for
your own use. If this were the case Montreal would cease to aid you in
that way."

But let us come at once to the year 1856. By that time Bishop Vandevelde
had vacated the diocese. The dampness of the Chicago climate aggravated
his rheumatism and rendered him incapable of doing his work properly, so
he asked to be released altogether from episcopal administration, or
else to be translated to some see further south. This, and not any such
reason as Chiniquy assigns, was the reason why he went to Natchez, to
which see he was translated in the autumn of 1853. Bishop O'Regan, the
conflicting accounts of whose character and personality we have already
given, succeeded Bishop Vandevelde in the autumn of 1854. If Chiniquy is
to be believed, as on a point of this sort probably he is, a state of
tension between him and his new bishop promptly arose. But however that
may be, he appears by the summer of 1856 to have become most anxious to
get back to Canada. For from Bishop Bourget's Letter to the Canadian
Catholics of Bourbonnais (Doc. C) we learn that on August 9, 1856,
Chiniquy wrote to him a letter in which he begs to be allowed to return
to Canada, and suggests a useful work there which he and he only could
carry through.

"If" (he says in this letter) "you place an
insurmountable barrier in the way of my return to Canada, ask God to
give me the strength to drink the chalice of humiliations and sacrifices
down to the dregs. For, I will not conceal it from you, one of my most
ardent desires is to see Canada again.... The principal citizens of
Montreal have expressed the desire to see me again, and their surprise
at my long absence. There are sad secrets in the life of priests and
bishops into which it would be deplorable if the world were to
penetrate."

Which last sentence appears to mean that, in face of the demand for his
return by the principal citizens of Montreal, it would be better to let
him return than risk the possibility of the reason for his exclusion
getting out, and giving scandal. But what was the work he desired to
undertake in Canada?

"The sore which under the name of emigration is devouring our
people is not sufficiently understood in Canada; or else firmer and more
energetic steps would be taken to restrain it.... Of all the Canadian
clergy I am unquestionably the one who has had the best opportunities of
knowing what this sore of emigration is. No one that I can think of has
been able in Canada or the United States to sound its depths as I have
done. It is not in an easy chair, in one of the fair presbyteries of
Canada, that I have studied the causes and disastrous consequences of
emigration.... Further, Monsignor, with all this information I have a
great desire to go and cast myself at your knees and beseech you to let
me say a word to the people in the towns and villages of Canada on this
emigration, its causes, its consequences, and its remedies. This word,
the fruit of prolonged studies and solid reflections, would not lack,
you may be sure, that force and eloquence which springs from profound
convictions and a sincere desire to hold back a whole race of brothers
who are rushing rapidly to their ruin. For five years now I have been
eating the bread of exile... but believe me, Monsignor, I have facts and
arguments, the exposition of which would resound with irresistible force
on both banks of the St. Lawrence... and which, with God's grace, might
result in a great good, by stopping this great evil. And my discourses
on this vital question would be the more appreciated, and would have the
more effect, because the mendacious press of Canada has accused me of
favouring the emigration of my fellow-countrymen."

This appeal, written in August, 1856, may well surprise us, when we
bethink ourselves of the same man's letter of August, 1851, published by
himself in all the Canadian papers, inviting the Canadians to come en
masse to the district in which he hoped himself to settle, and
describing it in such glowing terms that it came to be called "Chiniquy's
paradise." But our surprise increases when we learn that four
months later, in December, 1856, this same writer reverted to his former
contention, and in another public letter to the Canadian press took
credit to himself for the invitation to emigrate to Illinois which, when
he gave it five years previously, had been maliciously condemned by the
Canadian clergy, but which he declared had now been entirely justified
by the event. This was in a public letter to a M. Moreau, a Montreal
lawyer, the following extract from which is given by Mgr. Bourget in his
Letter to the Canadians of Bourbonnais.

"When I left Longeuil in 1851, having for my only provision the
breviary under my arm, to run after the emigrants who were losing
themselves in the corners of the United States, I was treated everywhere
as a deceiver and a visionary, bishops and priests in Canada denounced
me as a liar... the papers pledged to the Canadian clergy spread false
news about the fine and noble parish of Bourbonnais. And yet, in spite
of this fearful combination of hypocrisy, calumny, and falsehood
directed against me, I have succeeded in four years in creating all by
myself a foundation so fine and solid, with the aid of my poor brethren
from Canada, that M. Desaulniers was filled with admiration when he saw
it with his own eyes" (Doc. C).

It is impossible, after comparing these varying epistles, not to feel
that Chiniquy's method was to say, not what he thought to be true, but
rather what he thought would best serve his interests at the moment.
Still, it is also impossible not to feel that something serious must
have happened between August and December, 1856, to make such a change
of tone seem to him expedient. Was it that in August he had grounds for
thinking that a storm was gathering around him which he might, perhaps,
escape if he could have an honourable pretext for at once leaving
Illinois, but that by December the storm had broken, and he deemed his
only course was to brave it by taking up an attitude of injured
innocence and of revolt? What comes next may help us to solve this
problem.

On August 19th, ten days after his letter to Mgr. Bourget, Chiniquy was
suspended by Bishop O'Regan (Doc. A). What was the cause? From his pages
it is impossible to get any definite information.

In one place the bishop is made to say that he suspended him for his
stubbornness and want of submission when he ordered him to leave St.
Anne and go to Cahokia, on the banks of the Mississippi (p. 441). In
another he tells us he asked the Bishop "to make a public inquest
about him, and have his accusers confront him" (p. 439), which does
not tally with the notion of an offence so palpable as a refusal to go
where sent, and points to some offence of a secret kind, such as one
against morality. In a third place (p. 449) he suggests that the
suspension was inflicted because he would not give up to the Bishop the
property in his church at St. Anne -— again not the kind of offence to
establish which required confronting with accusers, and public inquests,
since all that was necessary, if Chiniquy wished to justify himself, was
for him to say, "I am quite ready to do all necessary to effect the
required transfer of the property."

Bishop O'Regan himself is much clearer (Doc. E). In a letter to Bishop
Prince, then coadjutor of Montreal, he says, under date of November 20,
1856: "The question of the property in the church had nothing to do
with the removal of M. Chiniquy from St. Anne's, or with his
disobedience, his schism, and his subsequent excommunication.... I had
in my hands all through the legal titles to all the church property
which no one could dispute.... I came to this last conclusion (namely,
to remove him from St. Anne's to Cahokia) for reasons of urgent
necessity which I told him at the time and which he is free to make
public [words which distinctly point to some offence against
morality]... his obstinate disobedience [namely, in refusing to go to
Cahokia], and the excessive violence of his language and behavior
obliged me to suspend him; his subsequent schism brought on his
excommunication."

And this agrees with what M. Mailloux wrote to Bishop Smith, in the
letter of March 28, 1858, already quoted from (Doc. A): —-

"I have lived here [at Bourbonnais] since one year. In Canada I
knew Mr. Chiniquy very well. I know what his conduct was morally, but
the moment is not favourable to mention it.... (1) Before interdicting
Mr. Chiniquy, Bishop O'Regan had received grave testimonials regarding
the moral conduct of Mr. Chiniquy. I am fully acquainted with the
facts and persons concerned. (2) The Sunday following the interdiction
issued against Mr. Chiniquy, on August 19, 1856, by the bishop's
order, it was published in the churches at Bourbonnais and l'Erable
that he had suspended Mr. Chiniquy from his functions. (3) Mr.
Chiniquy having violated that interdiction. Bishop O'Regan had him
publicly excommunicated on September 3rd following. Mr. Chiniquy had
in Canada, and still has here, the reputation of being a man of most
notorious immorality. The many women he has seduced, or tried to
seduce, are ready to testify thereunto. Those who in this country
[Bourbonnais] have lived in Mr. Chiniquy's intimacy loudly proclaim
that he has lost his faith long ago, and that he is an infamous
hypocrite."

Chiniquy, as we have seen, resisted the excommunication as he had
resisted the suspension, and continued to minister at St. Anne's,
capturing the support of his congregation by representing the bishop as
having brought against him an accusation which he knew was false and had
not attempted to sustain, the bishop's underlying motive being hatred
for the French Canadians, whom he wished to drive out of his diocese. It
was a great scandal, and Bishop O'Regan was anxious to end it.
Accordingly he wrote to Bishop Bourget, on October 19, 1856, asking for
help (Doc. E).

"Mr. Chiniquy [he says] has thoroughly corrupted the unhappy people
under his care. This has been the work of some years. It was begun long
before I came to this diocese, and I know not how it will terminate. The
mischief can only be remedied by a few worthy, pious, and intelligent
Canadian priests. If I had one such he could do much, as there is a
Canadian settlement not yet corrupted a few miles from St. Anne's, where
such a priest being located would soon take away most of his followers.
This would be a holy mission for some pious, educated, and devoted
priest. He would protect religion and some hundreds from the wicked man
who now deceives them."

The result was that Bishop Bourget sent M. Brassard, Chiniquy's old
friend and patron, and M. Desaulniers, one of his former classmates,
with whom, by his own acknowledgement, "he had been united"
ever since "in the bonds of the sincerest friendship." The
choice shows that their desire in coming was to convert Chiniquy himself
as well as his misguided people. They arrived at St. Anne's on November
24, 1856, and by the next day had succeeded so far as to get him to sign
the following form of retraction [addressed to the bishop] (p. 515):

As my actions and writings in opposition to your orders have for
the last two months given scandal, and caused many to believe that
sooner than obey you I would consent to be separated from the Catholic
Church, I hasten to express to you the regret I feel for such acts and
writings. And in order to show the world, and you, my Bishop, my firm
desire to live and die a Catholic, I hasten to write to your lordship
to say that I submit to your sentence, and promise never more to
exercise the sacred ministry in your diocese, without your permission.
In consequence, I beg your lordship to take off the censures you have
pronounced against me, and against those who have communicated with me
in things divine.

I am your most devoted son in Jesus Christ,

Charles Chiniquy

This retraction cannot be called satisfactory, for it is equivocal in
its language, and breathes no real sentiments of penitence. But it was
taken in Chiniquy's name to Bishop O'Regan the next day by M.
Desaulniers; M. Brassard remaining with his friend, to await the result.
The bishop said to M. Desaulniers, "I would prefer that [Chiniquy]
should go away without any retraction rather than give that one, and I
shall, as soon as he abandons St. Anne's and gives security that he will
not return, have no objection to remove his censures without any
retraction" (Doc. E - O'Regan to Desaulniers, December 15, 1856, in
which the bishop refers to his words on November 25th).

Chiniquy's conduct, when he learnt that the bishop would not make peace
with him on his own terms, thoroughly justified the latter's action. Had
the unhappy man been really penitent he would have obeyed orders and
left the neighbourhood. As it was he persisted in his schism, declaring
that he had only signed the retractation as an act of grace and on the
condition that he was to be left at St. Anne's, at least as an assistant
priest to his friend M. Brassard -- a quite inadmissible condition, of
which there is no trace in the text of the retraction. And he even had
the impudence and irreverence to say that in acknowledging that his
action had given scandal he had acknowledged no more than our Lord had
acknowledged when He said "You shall all be scandalized in Me this
night" (see Doc. D, which refers to this plea and comments on it).
Thus there was nothing more to be done with the unhappy man save to bear
with him, and strive to undeceive his congregation, for which purpose M.
Desaulniers, at the bishop's request, took up his abode at Bourbonnais;
whilst M. Brassard, whose methods of dealing with Chiniquy the bishop
found compromising, was invited to return to Canada.

M. Desaulniers found his work hard, but achieved some success in
reclaiming the schismatics, for Bishop Bourget told Bishop Baillargeon,
the administrator of Quebec, on February 4, 1857, that "Chiniquy's
followers are apparently diminishing, and are likely to cease altogether
if only a few more priests can be sent to them" (Doc. E); and on
January 1, 1857, a number of them wrote to Bishop Bourget a consoling
letter, in which they expressed their regret for having been misled, and
their readiness to submit in every way to Bishop O'Regan.

This letter was sent by Bishop Bourget to the Canadian papers, and it
was in reply to it that the bishop wrote his Letter to the Canadians
of Bourbonnais, dated March 7, 1857. This reply was taken to
Bourbonnais by Grand Vicar Mailloux, of the diocese of Quebec, and M.
Campeaux, of the diocese of Montreal, who left for Bourbonnais on March
20, 1857, to assist in the conversion of the schismatics. As it was read
from the altar in the church of Bourbonnais, and was published in all
the Canadian papers, it must have been found very disconcerting by
Chiniquy, who sought to discount its effects by a letter addressed to
Bishop Bourget, which he sent to the Canadian papers. It is the letter
of April 18, 1857, to which also we have had occasion to refer (vide
supra, p. 28), as containing the first mention of the affair with
the girl at Montreal in 1851.

This letter is given by Chiniquy (p. 526 of his Fifty Years) only
in part, for, as has been noted, Bishop Bourget, in his Explanation
of certain Facts misrepresented by Chiniquy in his Letter of April 18,
1857 (see above, p. 33), quotes as contained in it the words in
which Chiniquy assimilates the kind of scandal caused by himself with
that caused by our Lord Jesus Christ.

What Bishop Bourget thought of
Chiniquy's self-vindication in this letter we have already heard, but it
will be interesting, as throwing further light on his methods, to know
what his friend M. Brassard thought of it. If we are to believe the
account in Fifty Years (p. 529), M. Brassard, after reading
the letter of April 18th in the Canadian papers, wrote Chiniquy a
letter in which he said "Your last letter has completely unmasked
our poor Bishop, and revealed to the world his malice, injustice, and
hypocrisy."

Here, however, Mr. Chiniquy seems to have forgotten that, when a man is
engaged in fabricating facts, he should be particularly careful about
his dates. "When," he says, "I received that last
friendly letter from M. Brassard on April 1, 1857, I was far from
suspecting that on the 15th of the same month I should read in
the press of Canada the following lines from him" (p. 530).

"The following lines" were the text of a letter to the Courrier
de Canada, dated April 9th, in which M. Brassard says: "As some
people suspect that I am favouring the schism of M. Chiniquy, I think it
is my duty to say that I have never encouraged him by my words or
writings in that schism. When I went to St. Anne's... my only object was
to persuade that old friend to leave the bad ways in which he was
walking. I hope all the Canadians who were attached to M. Chiniquy when
he was united to the Church will withdraw from him in horror of his
schism. However, we have a duty... to call back with our prayers that
stray sheep into the true fold."

As M. Brassard wrote thus on April 9th, it is due to him to believe that
he did not write in so different a sense on April 1st, nor can this
supposed letter of April 1st be genuine, as a letter written before
April 1st cannot have been occasioned by a letter published on April
18th. Besides, if M. Brassard had written thus about unmasking Bishop
Bourget, it is inconceivable that Chiniquy should have written on April
23rd (Fifty Years, p. 530) to M. Brassard upbraiding him for the
published letter of April 9th, without bringing up against him the
inconsistency between the published and the private letter. Too much
stress, however, must not be laid on this last argument, for we are safe
in assuming that the letter of April 23rd was never sent to M. Brassard,
and was probably a fabrication perpetrated some twenty to thirty years
later, for the purpose of Chiniquy's book. We are practically safe in
assuming this, for a real letter is likely to have borne some relation
to the facts as known to M. Brassard, which this does not.

For instance, this supposed letter asks M. Brassard to say to the
Canadian people what he wrote to Dr. Letourneau, namely, that "they
do not wish to know truth in Canada more than at Chicago about the
shameful conduct of M. Desaulniers in this affair." But M.
Brassard, in a letter to Bishop Bourget of July 10th (Doc. E) tells him
that in the early winter of 1856 his advice to Dr. Letourneau had been:
"Go with your friends to M. Chiniquy and say to him, 'If you will
cease from exercising the ministry we will aid you in obtaining justice
if it is due to you, but if you will not we will abandon you,"' and
that he further recommended Dr. Letourneau "to get all his friends
to abandon him, that finding himself alone he might be constrained to
return to his duty."

Besides, we have other and more direct proof that Chiniquy was capable
of publishing unreal letters. On p. 441 of his book he tells us that
Bishop O'Regan "published to the world the most lying
stories to explain his conduct in destroying the French congregation at
Chicago," whereas that bishop in his letter to Bishop Prince of
November 20, 1858 (Doc. E) says: "I have not contradicted M.
Chiniquy's extravagant letters or the advances of his friends in the
same matter [namely, the closing of the French church at Chicago, which
had got into irremediable debt]. I have felt that these documents
contained in themselves their own refutation. These writings purport to
be, replies to a letter I am supposed to have written to the Chicago Tribune.
But I never wrote or published this pretended letter, nor has any one
written or published it for me, save the astute M. Chiniquy
himself." That means that Chiniquy had forged and sent to the
Chicago papers, as coming from the bishop, a letter in reality composed
by himself, and composed in such terms as to make it easy for him
afterwards to refute it. And M. Mailloux (Doc. A) has occasion to allude
to another public letter written at this same time, December 17, 1856,
by M. Chiniquy. It was written to the "Canadians of Troy," and
purported to be the reply to an address of sympathy sent him from that
quarter. M. Mailloux adds: "We shall see later whether this address
of the Canadians was not written by M. Chiniquy and presented to M.
Chiniquy by himself. If it was so it was nothing unusual for him to
do." As has been noted, the manuscript of M. Mailloux' memoir is
defective, and so we miss the promised demonstration which doubtless
formed a part of it. (p. 306).

Now let us come to a further, and still more monstrous, instance of his
dishonesty in the use of letters. On p. 538 of his book he tells us that
on receiving his letter of April 23, 1857 (the letter we have surmised
to be spurious), M. Brassard was confounded, and wrote to beg pardon for
his untruthful letter of April 9th, which "he had been forced to
sign," and in this alleged letter of apology, dated May 20, 1857,
M. Brassard is alleged to have said: "My dear Chiniquy, I am more
convinced than ever that you have never been legally suspended, now that
I have learnt from the Bishop of Montreal that the Bishop of Chicago
interdicted you by word of mouth in his own room -- a kind of
interdiction which Liguori says is null and of no effect."

With this alleged bit of letter a little history is connected. On June
8, 1858 (Doc. E), M. Brassard wrote to Bishop Bourget, saying. "I
have never given any testimony tending to prove that the sentence of
excommunication against M. Chiniquy was not signed by the bishop."
This disavowal Bishop Bourget sent on to M. Mailloux (Bishop Bourget to
M. Brassard, July 2, 1858, Doc. E), then in Bourbonnais, where Chiniquy
was still contending that M. Brassard was on his side. M. Mailloux wrote
back on June 24th to say that he had been glad to make use of the
disavowal, but that the day before (the 23rd) a M. Camille Paré, a
friend of Chiniquy's, had brought some papers among which was an
affidavit of M. Brassard's, signed with his own hand.

"Under oath M. Brassard declares that a letter annexed to [the
affidavit] is his, and that it contains his opinion on the schism of St.
Anne's. In this letter M. Brassard declares that Bishop Bourget had told
him that the suspension of M. Chiniquy was null because it had been
inflicted without witnesses; and M. Brassard further declares that the
bishop told him this was the opinion of Liguori."

Naturally Bishop Bourget was perplexed, and called upon M. Brassard for
an explanation, which the latter gave in two letters to the bishop dated
July 6 and July 10, 1858.

"... If I must be responsible for all that it pleases M. Chiniquy
and the inhabitants of St. Anne's to put into my mouth for the
furtherance of their cause I can never hope to clear myself. Indeed,
M. Mailloux himself would be greatly embarrassed if he were to be held
responsible for all that is attributed to him.

"Now let me reply to this latest accusation. I have never written
to M. Chiniquy that your lordship had told me the suspension inflicted
on him was invalid as having been inflicted without witnesses. Nor did
I ever write to him that you had said that this was the opinion of
Liguori. If it is my letter that has been shown to M. Mailloux, he
cannot have read in it any such thing, and if in the letter that was
shown to him he read the phrases I have just cited, that must have
been a forged letter, signature and all. As for the affidavit, that
was truly signed by me, except for the words that 'it contains my
opinion on the schism at St. Anne's.' Let me explain the history of
this affidavit. On the fourth of last May, after eight o'clock,
Camille Paré came to my house with a letter from M. Chiniquy and one
from Mr. Dunn, a Chicago priest who at the time of my visit two years
ago to Chicago was Grand Vicar, but (as I have learnt since) is so no
longer. M. Chiniquy asked me to make an affidavit acknowledging the
genuineness of a letter I had written to him more than a year ago. It
was a letter which he had shown to the Bishop of Dubuque, and which he
regarded as likely to facilitate his entrance into the good graces of
the bishop, but he had been accused before the bishop of having forged
this letter, as well as all the other papers he had produced at
Dubuque, papers on the strength of which the bishop had consented to
send M. Dunn to St. Anne's on on Palm Sunday to announce the return of
peace and to celebrate the divine offices. M. Dunn wrote to me at the
same time in English asking me to accede to the desire of M. Chiniquy,
for the good of religion. It was this letter from M. Dunn which caused
me to consent to declare by affidavit that the letter annexed to it
was in my handwriting and bore my signature, and that it stated what I
thought to be the truth. I wrote at the same time to M. Chiniquy
saying that I was giving him the affidavit solely for the purpose for
which he had asked it, and that it was not to be published, that it
was a confidential letter which I could not consent to have published.
Yet see what use he has made of it....

"I see that he has abused a confidence which I have long since
withdrawn from him, and that he has even abused the last act I did on
his behalf -- one, too, done on the recommendation of M. Dunn, whom I
believed still to be Grand Vicar of Chicago. When then I have done
what your lordship may think desirable [to put a stop to this misuse
of his name], I shall have finished with [M. Chiniquy]."

From this we see that Chiniquy was capable of asking for an affidavit
under pretence that it was to attest a genuine letter, and passing it
off as attesting one quite different, which contained seriously false
statements and which he himself had forged. After this we need surely
have no remaining hesitation in disbelieving the many other letters,
conversations, and occurrences with which the book abounds, and on which
it relies to exhibit the clergy of Canada and Illinois in a detestable
light. For instance, to specify some of the more salient points of this
kind, we may on this ground reject as spurious the letters attributed to
Bishop Vandevelde on pp. 345 and 384 together with the answers to
certain questions alleged to have been given by Bishop O'Regan (p. 440);
and likewise, the various conversations he is said to have had with M.
Beaubien (p. 27), M. Leprohon (pp. 66, 109), M. Perras (p. 136), Bishop
Prince (p. 334), M. Primeau (p. 341), Bishop Bourget (pp. 358, 365,
370), Bishop Vandevelde (p 377), Bishop O'Regan (pp. 391, 394, 426, 429,
437), Archbishop Kenrick (p. 434), Bishop Smith (pp. 544, 549).

Similarly we may reject as fictitious the most unlikely account of his
various dealings with Abraham (afterwards President) Lincoln, in
chapters lix to lxi. Particularly on this ground we may
reject the cock-and-bull story of the Catholic origin of the plot to
murder President Lincoln, fortified as it is by a palpably bogus
affidavit made at Chiniquy's request and for the purpose of his book in
1881 (p. 508).

A simple reference to the contemporary reports of the two trials of the
alleged conspirators, or to the standard Life of Lincoln by
Nicolay and Hay -— which, whilst exhaustive in its account of the
assassination and of the two trials of the accused, does not throw out
the smallest suggestion of a religious origin of the crime -- is
sufficient to dispel the unsupported allegation of a man convicted of
the dishonest practices we have been able to bring home to Chiniquy. Nor
does he better his case by invoking General Harris, the Methodist
General, who was one of the judges in the military trial of the
conspirators. For in the first place, though General Harris, in his History
of the Great Conspiracy Trial (1892), censures one or two priests
for maintaining the innocence of the Surratts, a great deal of what
Chiniquy quotes from him in his Forty Years in the Church of Christ
(p. 206) appears to be interpolated into his account. And in the second
place, General Harris says distinctly (Great Conspiracy Trial, p.
250), that "the only reference to the Catholic Church had been made
in the public press [and] the prosecution had carefully abstained from
any assault on that Church." Besides, in 1901 General Harris wrote
an approving Introduction to Mr. Osborne Oldroyd's Assassination of
President Lincoln, in the Preface to which the latter repudiates the
idea that "the Roman Catholic Church ever sanctioned that heinous
crime."

We may, too, on the same ground of Chiniquy's proved untrustworthiness
reject all that is to his purpose in what he has to say about the Spink
trial in chapters lvi and lviii. Some friends have been
kind enough to refer for us to the authentic report of this case in the
hearing at Urbana, on October 20, 1856. But it seems that only the
barest entries were made in those days, and the sole record of this
particular hearing is "Spink plaintiff, Chiniquy defendant, cause
slander."

Apparently Spink sued Chiniquy for one of the slanderous statements he
was wont to set afloat against any one who offended him, and Spink in
vindicating himself contended, that Chiniquy himself had been guilty of
the offence he had imputed to another. But, as M. Lebel's sister, the
person who seems to have declared that Chiniquy had misbehaved with her,
declined at the last moment to go into the witness box -— the sort of
thing that constantly happens in such cases -— Spink's suit suffered.

Anyhow two things about Chiniquy's account of the case are suspicious
-— one that he so mixes the items in his narrative that no one could
gather that the charge against him in this instance was one of libel;
the other that the affidavit of Philomene Moffat, made in in 1881 (p.
462), sounds untruthful, even if it be not altogether spurious. It
professes to testify to an overheard conversation, always a doubtful
kind of testimony, and whereas at its commencement it states that two
persons overheard the conversation, at the end it states that there were
three, a contradiction most unlikely in a genuine affidavit. Besides it
is hard to conceive how what is supposed to have happened in bringing
Philomene Moffat from Chicago to Urbana, a distance of some 125 miles,
could have taken place within the short space of ten hours at most. The
railway from Chicago to Urbana had only been opened two years
previously. Whether by 1856 it had been so fully equipped with express
trains, and whether, again, at that date there were regular evening
papers at Chicago, both of which the story implies, we have not been
able to ascertain.

We might stop here, but for completeness' sake will give briefly the
closing scene of Chiniquy's Catholic life.

Curiously, at the very time when, according to his book, he was so much
exercised by M. Brassard's condemnation of his schism, he was meditating
another attempt to get reconciled (on his own conditions?). On May 12,
1857 (Doc. K) M. Campeaux, writing to Bishop Bourget from Bourbonnais,
reported that "Chiniquy is showing signs of giving in," and
two days previously (ibid.) Chiniquy himself had written to the
same bishop to say he was inviting Bishop Pinsonneault, of Sandwich,
Ontario, and M. Brassard to be his intermediaries with Bishop O'Regan
for this purpose. Bishop Bourget wrote him back a kind letter of
encouragement (Doc. E) but we hear nothing more of the project at this
time.

The next episode in the history brings us to the spring of the following
year, 1858. During the interval Bishop O'Regan went to Rome, probably on
his official visit ad limina. As the visit terminated in his
translation to the titular see of Dora, it was in accordance with
Chiniquy's style that he should claim to have obtained his deposition by
representations made to the Holy See and to the Emperor Napoleon (p.
540); but Mr. Gilmary Shea's account sounds more probable. His successor
at Chicago was Bishop Duggan, who, however, did not get his Bulls till
January 21, 1859, though he was named administrator in the summer of
1858. Bishop Smith, of Dubuque, was appointed administrator of the see
of Chicago during the interval. Hence it was with Bishop Smith that
Chiniquy had to deal in 1858.

According to Fifty Years, Mr. Dunn -- formerly Grand Vicar of
Chicago -- who apparently was of Chiniquy's party, arrived at St. Anne's
on March 11, 1858, with the news of Bishop Smith's appointment. He is
represented as having been sent by the bishop to invite Chiniquy to send
in his submission, and the bishop is made to say a good deal to the
discredit of Bishop O'Regan which probably he did not say. Indeed, it
looks as if the initiative was taken by Chiniquy, with the object of
rushing the administrator, who could as yet have had insufficient time
to sift his case.

Anyhow, Chiniquy went with Mr. Dunn to Dubuque on March 25th, and signed
an act of retractation, which the bishop seems to have accepted, and on
the basis of which he authorised Mr. Dunn to go back with Chiniquy to
St. Anne's and announce the reconciliation of congregation and pastor on
Palm Sunday, which that year fell on March 28th. We may presume that
this did happen, though we do not feel certain, having only Chiniquy's
testimony to go by. Nor for the same reason can we feel certain that his
act of submission was worded as he gives it in his book, namely,
"We promise to obey the authority of the Church according to the
commandments of God as we find them expressed in the Gospel of
Christ." Such a form may be innocent, in itself, but is evidently
intended to lend to quibbling, by enabling the person signing it to say,
whenever he wished to disobey, that he did not find that particular
order in Scripture; nor is it likely that Bishop Smith would have
accepted so equivocal a document. Moreover, now that we know how little
trust can be reposed in Chiniquy's assertions, we may doubt whether
there was any tendency to Protestantism in him until the day, not then
arrived, when he found it convenient to exploit Protestant credulity for
reasons of bread and butter.

What is certain is that on March 27, 1858, he wrote (Doc. A) to M.
Mailloux, then at Bourbonnais, as follows: "I am happy to inform
you that I have made my peace with our good Bishop Smith, administrator
of the diocese. The Reverend Mr. Dunn will be with me at noon, at your
residence, to dine with you, and deliver into your hands my act of
submission. Meanwhile, help me to thank God for having put an end to
these deplorable divisions. And believe me your devoted servant, Charles
Chiniquy, Missionary of St. Anne's."

This looks as if the Bishop of Dubuque was not altogether satisfied with
the act of submission, and had it submitted to M. Mailloux that he might
report on it. M. Mailloux wrote back (Doc. A) to the bishop on the
following day (March 28) in terms which show that he thought the bishop
was in danger of being taken in by Chiniquy through imperfect knowledge
of his previous career. Hence he gives the substance of his bad record
from his Canadian days onward, as may be seen from the two salient
passages that have been already quoted from this letter.

The next we hear of Chiniquy was
from St. Joseph, Indiana, where he went to make the retreat which is
sure to have been one of the stipulated conditions of reconciliation.
From his Fifty Years we see that he realized that M. Mailloux was
doubtful about the sincerity of his depositions, and was warning the
bishop to be careful; and Mgr. Têtu in his Notes has preserved
for us another letter written to M. Mailloux by Chiniquy from this place
of retreat.

"In April, 1858," he says, "Chiniquy wrote to M. Mailloux
that he was making a retreat and sued for peace. 'You know,' he said,
'how weak and sinful I am. Ah! do not make me still weaker and more
sinful by driving me to despair.'" Another illustration of the
different language which the unfortunate man held in private from that
which he ascribes to himself in his book!

This letter of "April" must have been written at the beginning
of April. At least it must have been if Chiniquy is telling the truth
when he says that he was recalled from his retreat on April 6th, and
went back at once to see the bishop at Dubuque. In his account of this
interview he tells us that the bishop took back the previously accepted
act of submission, and demanded another expressed in more absolute
terms. This, he tells us, he refused to give, and hence was told he
"could no longer be a Roman Catholic priest" (p. 551).

Then he went to his hotel, where, according to his own tragic account,
after spending some time in an agony of distress over his abandoned
position, just in the nick of time -- when, having made himself
impossible to every Catholic bishop, he must needs seek elsewhere for
some means of living -- the light from Heaven dawned upon him, and he
saw clearly that the Church of Rome was false and that salvation was
with the Protestants. Then he went back to his flock at St. Anne's, and
on Sunday, April 11th, told them of the treatment he had experienced
from the bishop, and of the subsequent light from on high which had come
to deliver him. To his delight he found that his whole congregation was
prepared to secede with him.

It all sounds most beautiful in his pages, but once more there are some
considerations which make us a little skeptical as to whether it
happened, at all events at this time. For according to M. Brassard's
letter of July 6th, M. Camille Paré came to him on May 4th -- that is,
three weeks later than this supposed conversion of Chiniquy to
Protestantism -- and brought a message from Chiniquy asking for an
affidavit, "which he regarded as likely to facilitate his entrance
into the good graces of the bishop."

Moreover, as late as June 23rd this Camille Paré, still acting on
behalf of Chiniquy, was using this very affidavit to palm off the
spurious letter on M. Mailloux. Indeed, M. Brassard's letters to Mgr.
Bourget may be cited as proving that as late as July 10th no news of
Chiniquy's final separation from the Church and conversion to
Protestantism had reached the writer, who evidently thinks that he is
still keeping up his pretense that his faculties as a Catholic pastor
are intact through not having been withdrawn by any valid
excommunication.It would appear, then, that Mgr. Têtu's Notes
(Doc. A) are nearer the truth when they tell us:

"The unfortunate man was not converted. On August 3, 1858, Bishop
Duggan, of Chicago, excommunicated him publicly and in the presence of
an enormous crowd. Such was the end of an ignoble comedy: Chiniquy
after that could no longer call himself a Catholic. He would have
liked to continue to retain the name in order to glut his passions and
to command in the Church. It was not he who left the Church; it was
the Church who rejected him from her bosom. It was then that he
declared himself a Protestant and endeavoured to maintain in heresy
and schism all the souls he had perverted. The Canadian missionaries
soon set at naught his wiles and deceit. Nearly all the families that
had gone astray returned to the fold."

When thus cut off from the Catholic Church his first idea seems to have
been to keep his followers together as an independent religious body
under the name of "Catholic Christians." But, in striking
agreement with his letter of August 9, 1856, and in equally striking
contradiction with his published glorifications of the fertility of his
settlement, they found before many months were passed that they were in
the midst of a financial crisis.

This appears from a letter he wrote on September 28, 1859, to Dr.
Hellmuth, at that time Protestant Dean of Quebec (see Father
Chiniquy's Reformation in the Far West, reprinted from the Record,
B. M. press-mark, 4183 aa. 12). The letter is a cry of distress in face
of the "awful calamity" which is "rapidly destroying the
noble band of new converts," who "cannot last out much
longer."

"Before next spring the Church of Rome will exult over our ruins.
We will succumb, not because our new brothers and sisters have no
charity, but because there is a want of unity in their charity. You are
the only one in Canada who takes any interest in this glorious religious
movement. Last year some had shown us some goodwill, they had extended
to us a helping hand, but now we do not hear a word from them."

Probably it was for this reason that they quickly discovered that
"unless we joined one of the Christian denominations of the day we
were in danger of forming a new sect" (p. 571), and so were
formally received into the Presbyterian Church of the United States by
the Presbytery of Chicago on April 15, 1860 (p. 571).

But how long did he remain with these people? M. Mailloux (Document B)
tells us that "not having been able to retain the place which the
Presbyterian ministers of the United States had given him among them,
because they turned him out of their society, as we shall see
later" (namely, in the later part of his manuscript, which is
unfortunately lost), "the unfortunate M. Chiniquy had to come and
unite himself with those whom he had confounded on January 7, 1851"
-- that is, with M. Roussy, and the Presbytery of Montreal. Why was he
thus dismissed?

In the days of his lecturing campaign he was often challenged to deny,
if possible, that in 1862, after a visit to Europe, during which he had
made collections for a supposed seminary in Chicago, he was accused of
fraud, and rejected or expelled by the Chicago Synod. He never ventured
to take up this challenge, but a passage in his Fifty Years (p.
472) is interesting in this connection. In it he narrates that
"through the dishonest and false reports of those two men the money
I had collected [for the said seminary]... was retained nearly two
years, and lost in the failure of the New York Bank; [and] the only way
we found to save ourselves from ruin was to throw ourselves into the
hands of our Christian brothers of Canada" -- of Canada, be it
noticed, not of Chicago -- [by whom] "our integrity and innocence
were publicly acknowledged, and we were solemnly and officially received
into the Presbyterian Church of Canada on the 11th of June, 1863."

It is easy here to read between the lines that a charge of dishonesty
had been brought against him, one of the same kind as eight years
previously had been brought against him in connection with the burning
of the Bourbonnais church.

It was his misfortune to be continually having charges of the same kind
brought against him from different and independent quarters. However, on
January 10, 1864, he gave what his new friends doubtless regarded as a
signal proof of the soundness of his Protestantism, for on that day he
married his housekeeper.

Still, how did they find him in the matter of personal character? His
egotism and violence are conspicuous in all that he spoke or wrote
against his former co-religionists; were they entirely absent from his
relations with his new friends?

We are never likely to be told, but we cannot read without musing such
cryptic allusions as the following in the sermons preached at the time
of his decease: "We saw thy faults when thou were with us, but now
we see thy virtues," said the Rev. A. J. Mowatt on the Sunday after
his funeral (Forty Years in the Church of Christ, p. 497). What
faults, we ask?

"He had failings, yes, and who is without these? Those with which
he could in a special manner be reproached must be charged to the
inadequate and positively harmful clerical education he had received,
and which in after years he so vigorously combated," said the Rev.
C. E. Amaron, preaching at the graveside on January 19, 1899 (ibid.,
p. 486).

"On leaving home for more advanced and literary and theological
studies, he entered upon a course of training much of which he
afterwards deplored. Possibly some of his best friends were right in
thinking that they saw occasionally traces of this bad education in his
after-life," says his son-in-law in the Preface to this same book.
What were these special faults, one wonders?

Of course we are aware that bigots of this type, when they pick up
eagerly, but to their cost, the weeds which the Pope has thrown over his
wall, find it convenient to ascribe their noxious properties to the
defects of the Pope's soil. We are aware, too, what are the particular
noxious properties which Chiniquy in his writings finds it convenient to
debit to the Pope's soil. Was it to matters of this sort that the
preachers and the Preface-writer were thus dimly alluding?

In this connection we may say that the Catholic Truth Society cannot
undertake a refutation of Chiniquy's book entitled The Priest, the
Woman, and the Confessional.

To write or to circulate such a work, which cannot fail to pollute the
minds of its readers, is an outrage upon decency, and it would be
impossible to deal with it in a pamphlet intended for general
circulation. The reader will accept our assurance that in it Chiniquy
has employed the same methods of misrepresentation and misstatement
which have been exposed in the foregoing pages.

ORIGINALLY PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY (LONDON, 1908)

(The foregoing online version of the above essay has been published
through the collaborative efforts of Jim Goodluck, Lane Core Jr., Sue
Sims and Antoine Valentim.)

Most people today have never heard of Charles Chiniquy. However, between
1885 and 1899, he was one of the most famous men alive.

Chiniquy was an excommunicated former Catholic priest who became famous
in 1885 when he published a book, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,
which made numerous scandalous accusations against the Catholic Church
and its leaders. He thereafter earned his living by giving speeches and
writing books and pamphlets attacking the Church.

Charles Chiniquy was born in 1809 in Kamouraska, Quebec. He was baptised
and raised a Catholic. By all accounts, he was then very devout in his
faith.

Later, as a young man, he felt called to become a priest. Chiniquy
became a student at the Petit Séminaire (Little Seminary) in Nicolet,
Quebec, from which he graduated a few years later. He was ordained a
Catholic priest in 1833.

In the following years, Chiniquy was an assistant priest and later a
pastor at various parishes in Canada and in the United States. During
the 1840s, he led a very successful campaign throughout Quebec against
the evils of alcohol and drunkenness. This was unquestionably the high
point of his career as a priest.

In 1851, a Baptist minister named Louis Roussy agreed to participate in
a public debate against Chiniquy on the subject the Catholic Church and
the Bible. At the time of this debate, Chiniquy was still a Catholic
priest, and, in the words of the late Rev. Sydney Smith, "he talks
just as a Catholic priest would talk, except for the repulsive egotism
and browbeating which is all his own."

Roussy was a Swiss immigrant and a leader of a Protestant missionary
society. According to the records of this society, "a decisive
motivation" of the organization was the conversion of Catholics to
Protestantism.

Chiniquy, later the same year, published a transcript of the debate. It
was distributed widely in Canada in the 1850s.

The text of this document is reproduced on the following page. It is a
clever piece of work, and although not very deep, it is nonetheless
remarkable for the clearness in which Catholic principles are set forth
and defended.

Sadly, a few years later, Chiniquy committed a series of acts of
immorality and other unfortunate wrongdoing, which ultimately led to his
excommunication from the Catholic Church in 1858. The reasons for this
excommunication are discussed, in detail, in the essay Pastor
Chiniquy (by the same Rev. Sydney Smith, quoted above).

Not long afterwards, Chiniquy became a member of the Presbyterian
church. He was ordained as a minister in 1860.

Chiniquy spent the remainder of his life making inflammatory speeches
and publishing derogatory books and pamphlets assailing the Catholic
Church. He died in 1899.

Today, very few readers are aware that Chiniquy once debunked the
very same allegations which he later made against the Church. In this
context, it is worth mentioning that Chiniquy, after he became a
Protestant, never, either in English or in French, in lecture or
brochure, in any way whatsoever, attempted to refute his own powerful
arguments in favor of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, the anti-Catholic books and pamphlets of Charles Chiniquy
are still being sold and circulated. Many are available, in full, on the
Internet. It is somewhat astonishing that his tirades were not laid to
rest with his bones.

Readers of the following document can compare the Chiniquy of the
Catholic Church with the Chiniquy of Protestantism.

THE TWO CHINIQUYS: Charles Chiniquy refutes Charles Chiniquy

On January 7th, 1851, several
citizens of Ste. Marie, Quebec, Canada, were sent in all directions
through the community to announce that a certain Mr. Louis Roussy, who
for some weeks had been doing his best to convert the Catholics of the
parish, had at last consented to hold the public discussion which had
been previously demanded of him in vain. The result was that, by one
o'clock, over four hundred persons had crowded into the large hall of
the presbytery around the Rev. Mr. Chiniquy and Mr. Roussy, for whom a
platform had been erected to enable the crowd to hear to advantage.

Mr. Joseph Harbeck was elected chairman, and Messrs. F. H. Gatien,
notary, and Leandre Franchere, merchant, were requested to act as
secretaries, and to take notes of what was said and done during the
discussion. Messrs. Chiniquy and Roussy then agreed to abide by the
decisions of the majority on all personal questions, or those of
privilege (but not those of doctrine) which might arise during the
discussion. The chairman also undertook to preserve order and silence in
the assembly.

Mr. Roussy requested that ten persons should be appointed to assist the
chairman with their advice and to enable him the better to maintain
order. The Rev. Mr. Chiniquy replied that he did not see the necessity
of naming so great a number of persons, as it would tend to complicate
matters and lengthen out questions that might arise for decision;
besides, that there was no necessity for so many persons to maintain
order amongst such peaceable, respectable men as were those among whom
he had the pleasure and honor to find himself; but since it was Mr.
Roussy's desire he would not oppose it.

Ten persons were, in consequence,
selected to assist the chairman. The preliminary arrangements were
thereupon completed.

Mr. Chiniquy then rose and spoke, as follows:

Mr. Chairman - This is an event which you have long desired in this
parish -- a circumstance for which I, too, have offered up my most
fervent prayers. Certain men have come here proclaiming that we are
idolaters; that our religion is nothing but a mass of error. They state
publicly that Catholic priests are nothing but false prophets who
deceive the people. And one of these men is today amongst us to prove,
so he says, all these assertions. Well, I am glad to meet him. With
God's grace, nothing will be easier for me than to confound him, and to
show on which side are the false prophets, ignorance and falsehood.

But before entering into the discussion, I have one proposition to make
to you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Roussy and I have agreed to abide by your
decisions on questions of form that may arise between us; therefore in
regard to the proposition I am about to submit to you, I wish to abide
by your decision. Out of respect for this large gathering, it seems to
me but right that Mr. Roussy and myself should both inform you who we
are, where we come from, and in what degree we deserve the respect and
attention of those before whom we have the honor of speaking.

MR. ROUSSY (rising hastily): Mr. Chairman, I protest against Mr.
Chiniquy's proposition. Before coming here, I agreed with this gentleman
that during our discussion, there should be no personal questions raised
between us, and Mr. Chiniquy cannot make this proposition without
violating his word of honor which he has pledged to me.

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Chairman, it is certain that Mr. Roussy did not
understand me, if he believed that the arrangement made between him and
myself, in your presence, as well as in the presence of more than fifty
witnesses this morning, deprives me of the right of politely asking him
who he is, where he comes from, to what religion he belongs, and who has
authorized him to preach. Europe is casting every day thousands of
strangers on our shores. Amongst these emigrants, there are some who
come here with a character not only equivocal but entirely lost; in a
word, there are some who arrive, after having a thousand times deserved
the rigors of the law.

I do not mean to say that Mr. Roussy should necessarily be of this
number. No, certainly not, but it seems to me, that we, Canadians, would
deserve the contempt that many Europeans have for us, if we should be
forever ready to bestow our respect on the first adventurer who, decked
out with a title, taken I don't know where, comes posing as an apostle
of a new religion.

MR. ROUSSY (taking up his cap and overcoat): I am going; this is a
carefully prepared trap for me. Mr. Chiniquy violates the word of honor
which he has given me, and he insults me by giving it to be understood
that I am an unprincipled adventurer.

MR.CHINIQUY: Mr. Roussy is strangely mistaken, if he believes that I
wish to insult him. I had not the faintest idea of doing so — but it
seems to me that every man who respects himself has a right to know to
whom he speaks, with what kind of man he argues. It is to enable me to
fulfill the promise that I have made, to avoid all personalities during
the discussion, that I ask Mr. Roussy at the present time: who he
is, where he comes from, to what religion he belongs; who has given him
a mission to preach and explain the Gospel; or by what right he poses as
an apostle amongst us, if no one has given him the power to preach. The
discussion is not yet commenced. The proposition that I make is not,
then in violation of the word of honor I have pledged — not to bring
in questions of personality during the discussion.

When Mr. Roussy asked to name a chairman, assisted by ten other persons,
to decide personal or formal questions which might arise between us two,
he supposed necessarily that during the discussion, some such questions
were likely to crop up. The surprise which this gentleman pretends to
manifest, appears to me to be nothing but a miserable pretext to escape
us and back out of a discussion in which he has more than one reason to
fear that the advantage will not be on his side. Besides, Mr. Chairman,
it is neither Mr. Roussy nor myself, but you and you alone, who ought to
decide this question; and Mr. Roussy is bound to abide by your judgment,
if he has any respect for the word of honor which he gave to submit to
your decision.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Roussy, it seems to me that the request of Mr.
Chiniquy is fair. A man of honor ought never to be afraid or ashamed to
declare what claim he has to the respect and consideration of those
before whom he appears, particularly for the first time. Although we
wish to suppose that you are a gentleman, the greater number of those
who form this assembly, and myself in particular, would like to know,
for certain, who you are, where you come from, and from whom you hold
the mission to preach the Gospel.

These words were heartily applauded by the entire audience. Mr. Chiniquy
then arose and handed the Secretaries the following document, saying:

This, Mr. Chairman, will tell you who I am:

IGNATIUS BOURGET, by the mercy of God and the grace of the Holy
Apostolic See, the Bishop of Ville Marie (Montreal). We certify and we
wish to make known to all those who may read this letter, that the
Reverend Charles Chiniquy, Priest, Apostle of Temperance, of our
Diocese, is well known to us, and that, after diligent examination, we
declare that he leads a life worthy of the Ecclesiastical state, and
that he is not, to our knowledge, bound by any Ecclesiastical censure.
For these reasons we pray by the mercy of God, all the Archbishops,
Bishops, or other Ecclesiastical dignitaries upon whom he may call to
receive him well, for the love of Jesus Christ and in case he should
desire it, to permit him to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice and to exercise
other Ecclesiastical functions declaring that we are, Ourselves, ready
to confer upon him these privileges, and others even greater.

In faith of which, we have given the present letter under our hand and
seal and the countersign of our Secretary, in our Episcopal city and
place, the 6th of June, 1850.

† IGNATIUS, Bishop of Montreal
J.O. PARE, Chancellery Sec.

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Chairman, I have just shown you who I am. Let Mr.
Roussy do as much; let him tell us what kind of a character he had on
leaving Europe; let him tell us by what authority he preaches the
Gospel; to what religion he belongs; yes, let him have the condescension
to inform us if he belongs to the Episcopal Church of England or the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland, or whether he is a Methodist, Juniper
or Mormon. These are certainly things it is important we should know,
and which we have a right to ask from a wise man who poses as a prophet
amongst us.

MR. ROUSSY (rising hastily and taking his overcoat to leave): I cannot
consent to remain here any longer. I refuse to give the explanations
that Mr. Chiniquy demands, for I would not have come here to meet him,
if I had believed he would try to deprive me of my character of a
gentleman and a minister of the Gospel. I consider his request a
downright insult. If I were not a minister of the Gospel, His Excellency
the Governor would not have given me diplomas to bury the dead, to marry
and to keep a register of such events.

MR. CHINIQUY: Really, Mr. Chairman, a singular manner to prove that one
is a minister of the Gospel. Mr. Roussy assures us that the Governor has
given him permission to bury, to marry and to keep a register of such
events! To speak to us of a diploma from the Governor, in order to prove
that one is a minister of the Gospel, is the most ridiculous and absurd
thing, Mr. Chairman, that you and this respectable assembly have ever
heard of. A governor may certainly name a justice of the peace, a
captain of the militia, a civil magistrate, but he cannot go any
further.

When Mr. Roussy assures us that he expected to be treated by me as a
true minister of the Gospel, he was laboring under a great delusion.
Strangers arriving in this country must take us, doubtless, for
imbeciles, when they believe that on their simple word, we are going to
give them the titles, the confidence and the respect that they demand --
that we are going, in a word, to bow humbly before their ipse dixit.
If Mr. Roussy has, up to this moment met people who were good enough to
act in this manner in regard to him, he is greatly mistaken, I can
assure him, if he believes that you, Mr. Chairman, and this respectable
assembly, are ready to look upon him as a true and worthy minister of
the Gospel, before he has given us his credentials. As regards myself,
this morning, before more than fifty men, I did something which should
have opened Mr. Roussy's eyes, as to what I thought about him. You were
present Mr. Chairman, and the circumstance did not, I am certain, escape
your notice. I shook hands with everybody except Mr. Roussy.

Mr. Roussy is the first man whom, I believed it my duty, to treat in
such a manner. I am only waiting to shake hands with him, but first let
him prove to us that his titles are not a usurpation. I shall be pleased
and happy to give him my hand at that moment. But to enable me to do so
he must show us that he is not imposing on us when he announces himself
as a new apostle and a successor of those to whom Jesus Christ has said:
"Go teach all nations; I am with you all days even to the end of
the world."

MR. ROUSSY (wishing to leave): Mr. Chiniquy insults me, and I will not
hold a discussion with the gentleman unless he makes me an apology.

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Chairman, if it be an insult to ask a person to whom
one has never spoken, whom one has never seen before, and who comes, God
knows from where; "Who are you sir? where do you come from? and
what do you want?" If it be an insult to ask such questions, I am
ready to make every apology (smiling). Yes, I am ready even to throw
myself on my knees before Mr. Roussy to beg his pardon if you deem it
right. But it seems to me that it is not I who insult Mr. Roussy; it is
he who insults us when he tells me, that we have not the right in Canada
to demand of the foreigners that Europe is constantly casting upon our
shores, "who are you? where do you come from? and what do you
want?" Especially when these foreigners pose in our presence as
ambassadors of Christ upon earth. Decide, Mr. Chairman. Is it an insult
to a man who comes in the name of God, asking us to change our religion;
who comes preaching to us a new doctrine; and who announces himself as a
minister from heaven, to say to him: "Who are you, and who has
given you a mission to preach the Gospel? What proof have you to give us
that you know how to interpret the Sacred Scriptures better than the
Catholic Church? Prove to us that the Holy Spirit enlightens you more,
you alone, than He enlightens the two hundred millions of Catholics who
people the world."

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Roussy, I do not think that Mr. Chiniquy insults you
in asking who you are and who has given you a mission to preach.

Mr. Roussy, being still anxious to leave, Mr. Chiniquy thereupon
demanded of the ten gentlemen named to assist the Chairman with their
advice: Decide, gentlemen, if it be an insult to ask a stranger who he
is, where he comes from, and, what he wants. I appeal to your honor and
your good sense. If you decide that it is an insult I am ready to do
whatever you deem right to repair it. I am determined, however, that Mr.
Roussy shall not escape us. For a long time, I have desired to show this
good parish the ignorance of all these makers of new religions, and this
opportunity is too fine a one to let slip. I wish therefore to do all in
my power to force Mr. Roussy to argue before you. But as I think Mr.
Roussy will never consent, for good reasons of his own, to show us what
titles he has to our respect as a minister of the Gospel, I withdraw my
motion. And without knowing what kind of man I have to deal with, I
consent to discuss with him.

Mr. Roussy wished to leave at once, but was stopped, in order that the
ten judges named at this gentleman's express wish should give a
decision.

Upon which one of the ten, a Protestant named Auger, on behalf of all,
said: "Mr. Roussy, as Mr. Chiniquy declares he had no intention of
insulting you, in asking you who you are, you ought to accept his
explanation. The more so as the gentleman declares himself ready to
offer you any kind of apology that we may deem proper to demand of him.
Besides as Mr. Chiniquy withdraws his motion and consents to discuss
with you without knowing who you are, you cannot under the circumstances
honorably refuse the discussion."

This decision elicited great applause, and Mr. Roussy resumed his seat.

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Chairman, I would have liked to have known with whom I
was going to enter this discussion, and it still seems to me that we
have the right to know, but since this knowledge is denied us, let us
open the discussion without any further delay. Mr. Roussy travels
through the country telling us that the Bible, and the Bible alone,
interpreted by each individual, ought to be the sole rule of our faith.
He asserts that the Bible is the only authority that can possibly be our
guide in the darkest hours of life. He has said that we ought to reject
everything which is not proved by a clear text from the Bible. He says
that we ought not to take any notice of the Holy Traditions, nor of the
authority of the Church. Well, Mr. Chairman, I defy Mr. Roussy to prove
these assertions, and I bind myself to demonstrate that each of these
propositions is an absurdity.

MR. ROUSSY: Mr. Chairman — Nothing is easier for me to prove than that
the Bible, and the Bible alone, and not tradition, is the rule for every
man who desires to work out his salvation.

Moses says expressly in the book of Deuteronomy (Chap. 4: 2, 5):
"Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall
ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord
your God which I command you. Behold, I have taught you statutes and
judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in
the land whither ye go to possess it."

This is very precise: "Ye shall not add unto the word which I
command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it." Is it not a
fact, Mr. Chairman, that this passage is directly opposed to the
doctrine of tradition?

In the book of Joshua (Chap. 1:7-8), God speaking to this leader of His
people, says to Him: "Only be thou strong and very courageous, that
thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses, My
servant, commanded thee; turn not from it to the right hand or to the
left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of
the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate
therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all
that is written therein."

We also read the following words in the book of Nehemiah (Chap. 8: 2-3,
8): "And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation
both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon
the first day of the seventh month. And he read therein before the
street that was before the water gate from the morning till mid-day,
before the men and women, and all those that could understand; and the
ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. So they
read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense and
caused them to understand the reading."

The 119th Psalm, which is the longest as well as the most beautiful of
all the Psalms, is nothing but a repetition of the great advantage of
constant meditation on the law of the Lord.

What does God tell us by the voice of the Prophet Isaiah, if not to have
His holy law constantly before our eyes and in our heart. These are the
exact words of the holy Prophet (Chap. 8:19-20): "And when they
shall say unto you, 'Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto
wizards that peep and that mutter'; should not a people seek unto their
God? For the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony; if
they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in
them."

But let us leave the Old Testament and the prophets; we have seen that
they are unanimous in inviting us to meditate upon and constantly study
the law of the Lord. They do not speak in the manner of Tradition.

Let us come then to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to His Holy Gospel. We
shall see that they are still more emphatic in urging us to study the
law of the Lord, and to avoid the traditions of men.

In St. Matthew (Chap. 15:3), Jesus Christ answers the Pharisees:
"Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your
tradition?" Is not the doctrine of Tradition condemned here by the
mouth of Christ Himself?

In St. John (Chap. 5:39) does not our Lord positively say: "Search
the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are
they which testify of me."

And what can more positively show us the necessity and utility of
reading and constantly meditating on the holy scriptures, than this text
from the Acts of the Apostles (chap. 17:11-12): "These [Jews of
Berea] were more noble than those of Thessalonica in that they received
the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily,
whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed; also of
honorable women which were Greeks and of men, not a few."

You can see by all this what we ought to think of a church which
deprives its followers of the holy scripture to amuse them with its
traditions! And St. John in the Revelation (Chap. 22:18-19), does he not
say that those are cursed by God who add to or take away one word of the
book of this prophecy. Is not this a striking proof that God wishes us
to be guided by nothing but the written words in His Holy Gospel, and
that He has a horror for the traditions of men?

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Chairman — It was the custom of our dear old
grandmothers to frighten little children by childish tales. It seems
that it is also the custom amongst reformers of religion to imagine dark
and dismal stories with which they horrify and amuse their dupes.
Amongst these alarming histories, with which every echo from the
so-called reformed countries resounds, the most ridiculous, the most
absurd, and the most false, is without contradiction, the one with which
Mr. Roussy has appeared engrossed during the reading of the long list of
texts which we have just heard, I don't really know for what purpose.
Mr. Roussy has so many times heard his old grandmother tell the story
that we Catholics are the enemies of the word of God, and that we abhor
the Holy Bible, that he firmly believes it. But in reality this is one
of those ancient tales for which educated Protestants blush.

Who preserved intact the sacred trust of the Holy Scriptures during the
fifteen hundred years preceding the appearance of the lewd apostates,
Luther and Calvin, if it was not the Catholic Church? Before these two
monsters of impurity had troubled the peace of the world, deceiving
people by their sophisms and errors of every sort; before there was even
one single Protestant in the world, the Catholic Church not only
preserved the sacred writings as her most precious treasure, but she
neglected no possible means of spreading their knowledge amongst all
nations.

During the short space of time which had elapsed between the wonderful
invention of printing and the day that Luther published his first Bible,
from seventy-five to eighty editions of the Bible, translated into the
different languages of Europe, and forming not less than two hundred
thousand copies, had been circulated amongst the people, with the
authorization, and often at the expense, of the Catholic ecclesiastical
authorities. If the Church, during a few years, was obliged to put
certain restrictions on the diffusion and reading of the Bible in modern
languages, Protestants alone were the cause of it. These sects had so
changed the text in their false translations; they had by their
ignorance, or rather by the corruption of their minds and hearts so
poisoned this source of life, that those coming to drink of it
found in it the death rather than the life of their souls.

Europe was for some time inundated with bibles in which the true text,
as acknowledged by well-educated Protestants, had disappeared to give
place to the senseless and impious dreams of the sects. Then, but then
alone, the Church, rightly fearing, or rather, seeing that those
falsified bibles were being taken for the true word of God, put some
restrictions for a time on the reading of the Bible in modern languages.
She did then what wise and able physicians do in times of epidemics;
they forbid us certain foods which are excellent in other times, but
which become dangerous on account of the impure disposition of the air,
or of our temperaments. But never has the Church shackled the diffusion
of the Holy Bible in the Greek or Latin text. Now, at that time, nearly
everybody who knew how to read at all understood Greek or Latin; for
these two languages were then taught far more universally than they are
today in all the principal schools of Europe. But the unhappy epoch when
a deplorable epidemic forced the Church of Jesus Christ to take this
extreme measure in order to prevent the contagion of evil attacking the
very heart of the nations, was not of long duration. The devouring fever
which Satan had, by the hands of Luther and Calvin, infused into the
veins of Europe, had scarcely lost its intensity and contagion, when the
Church once more invited her children to nourish their souls by the
reading of the Holy Bible, and put it within the reach of all by the
numerous authorized translations, which She recommended everywhere by
the voice of Her chief pastor.

Certain Protestants still repeat that the Church forbids the reading of
the Holy Bible by the people; this is a cowardly and absurd lie, and it
is only the ignorant or the silly amongst Protestants, who at the
present day believe this ancient fabrication of heresy; some
unscrupulous ministers, however, are constantly bringing it up before
the eyes of their dupes to impose upon them and to keep them in a holy
horror of what they call Popery.

Let Protestants make the tour of Europe and America; let them go into
the numerous Catholic book stores they will come across at every step;
let them, for instance, go to Montreal, to Mr. Fabre's or to Mr.
Sadlier's book stores; and everywhere they will find on their shelves
thousands of Bibles in all modern languages, printed with the permission
of the Ecclesiastical authorities.

I hold in my hand a New Testament, printed less than five years ago, at
Quebec. On the first page I read the following approbation of the
Archbishop of Quebec:

We approve and recommend to the faithful of our Diocese this
translation of the New Testament, with commentaries on the text and
notes at the foot of the pages.

† JOSEPH, Archbishop of Quebec.

Every one of those Catholic Bibles, to be found on sale at every
bookseller in Europe or America in like manner bears irrefutable witness
to the fact that Protestantism is fed on lies, when day by day it
listens with complacency to its ministers and its newspapers, telling it
in various strains, that we Catholics are the enemies of the Bible.

Mr. Roussy has told us that the reading of the Bible was the sole means
employed by Christ and His Apostles for the conversion of the world. Mr.
Roussy obtains, probably, as all Protestants do, this new idea from his
good old grandmother. But, Mr. Chairman, you must see that never has a
greater absurdity issued from the mouth of man. It is incredible that
men, who are continually talking to us of Bibles and Bibles, do not know
that Jesus Christ has said to His Apostles: "Go ye into the whole
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be
condemned" (St. Mark, Chapt. 16:15-16). And in St. Matthew (Chap.
28:18-20) Jesus, speaking to his eleven disciples, says to them:
"All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go, therefore,
teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days,
even to the end of the world."

It is not, we see, a book that the Apostles are charged to write, to be
read to the people to the end of the world. But their mission is
to take the form of verbal preaching, in which mission the Divine
Saviour promises to assist and guide them, not during thirty, forty or
sixty years, but to the end of the world. It is by the preaching
of the Apostles to the people, and not merely by the reading of
the Gospel by the people that Jesus Christ wishes men to be enlightened
and saved, to the end of the world. And this is why the Catholic
priesthood, sole possessors of the mission given to the first Apostles,
teaches, preaches and explains the Gospel to the people.

Jesus Christ has not said: "He that does not read the Gospel
shall be condemned." That is an absurdity and a falsehood: which
can have only issued from Hell itself; but Jesus Christ has said to his
Apostles for all time: "Preach the Gospel; teach all nations; I
shall be with you; he that heareth you, heareth Me; He that
despiseth you, despiseth Me; he that believeth on your preaching shall
be saved, he that does not believeth it shall be lost." Jesus
Christ has not said: "If you do not read the Bible you shall
be regarded as the heathen and the publican", but He has said:
"If you do not hear the Church you shall be as the heathen
and the publican" (St. Matthew, 18:17).

It is then a Church that Jesus Christ came on earth to found, not
a book that he came to have written and read. The Gospel is the
property of the Church, it is one of its sacred trusts; it is one of its
greatest treasures. She it is who is charged to preserve it and to
explain its pages to the people. For it is to her alone and not to each
individual that the promise was made and the mission given.

To say that Jesus Christ and his Apostles wished the nations to be
converted by reading the Bible, interpreted by each individual, is so
great an absurdity that I have the greatest difficulty in conceiving how
a self-respecting man can possibly allow it to fall from his lips.

Everybody knows that before the invention of printing, books were just
as scarce and expensive, as they are nowadays common and cheap. For 1400
years after Jesus Christ, every word had to be written by hand. Now to
write out a whole Bible would require a great deal of time. Amongst many
nations, almost constantly at war, very few persons knew how to write.

History records the names of even several powerful kings, who did not
know how to sign their names. To have so large a book written,
therefore, it was necessary to have an enormous sum of money. It was
therefore absolutely impossible for the great majority of
Christians for the space of 1400 years to either own Bibles or to read
them. We also learn from history that previous to the invention of
printing it was the custom for people to tax themselves in order to
obtain a Bible, which was then deposited in the Church, where the priest
would read some part of it every Sunday, and explain it to the people.

It was not by the reading of the Bible, but by the preaching of
Apostles, commissioned by the Church of Jesus Christ that the French,
the English, the Germans, the Spanish, the Irish, the Greeks, the
Romans, and all other nations were converted to Christianity; for
amongst these different nations very few persons knew how to read, and a
very much smaller number, indeed, had the means with which to procure a
Bible. Let Mr. Roussy deny these facts, if he dares.

Well, since it is admitted as an ascertained fact that it was the will
of Jesus Christ that His Church should march on to the conquest of souls
by means of preaching for 1500 years, it devolves on Mr. Roussy
to show us a single text in his Bible, which informs us that Jesus
Christ decided that the reading of the Bible by each individual, should,
at any period whatever during the life of the Church, take the place of
this preaching.

It is clear that if Mr. Roussy's system were based on the truth, Jesus
Christ would have commanded his Apostles not to preach the Gospel
till the end of the world, but to teach the nations how to read and to
give them Bibles. And instead of Apostles, it would have been
school-masters that he would have promised and sent to the nations
sitting in the darkness of the shadow of death.

Mr. Roussy tells us that Our Lord was opposed to the false traditions
of men, but is the Church less opposed to these false human
traditions, or does she condemn them less than Her Lord and Master
did? When Mr. Roussy says, all that is necessary to be believed and
practiced is written in the Gospel, and that it is not necessary to
believe in those truths taught by tradition; when, in a word, Mr. Roussy
says the Catholic dogma of Tradition is not to be found in Holy
Scripture, he simply shows either his bad faith or his ignorance.

Here is a Bible which comes from Mr. Roussy himself. Well, in the Second
Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, listen to what the Holy
Apostle writes (Chap. 2:15): "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and
hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by
word or our epistle." Here St. Paul tells us that what comes to
us by means of the unwritten word, that is to say, by
tradition, has the same authority as what he wrote in his epistle.
Is it not, then, something more than effrontery on Mr. Roussy's part to
dare to tell us to our face that Tradition is not spoken of in the Holy
Scriptures?

Again, in Chapter 3, verse 6, of the same Epistle, St. Paul says:
"Now we command you, brethren, in the name of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh
disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of
us."

In the second Epistle to St. Timothy (Chap. 2: 1-2), St. Paul
contradicts, in advance, the absurd assertion of Mr. Roussy which
maintains that all the truths and doctrines of Jesus Christ are written,
and that there are none which reach us by tradition. His words are clear
and precise: "Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that
is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many
witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to
teach others also."

Really, Mr. Chairman, when Mr. Roussy told us that everything was
written in the sacred books, and that they have nothing to say about
tradition, he had either lost his memory or supposed us so ignorant as
to be incapable of reading the Epistles of St. Paul. Mr. Roussy has been
truly unhappy in the choice he has made of his texts, for the purpose of
proving that each individual is obliged to read Sacred Scripture, and
has a right to interpret it in his own way.

He has cited the text in which Moses directs that we should observe the
law of God. And that is precisely what we wish all to do. Yes, would
that all the world meditated on the law of God. Now one of His laws, one
of His Commandments, the most absolute is this: "Hear the Church,
and he that will not hear the Church must be regarded as a heathen and a
publican" (Matt. 18:17).

He next cited Joshua. Now, Joshua was the leader, the great chieftain of
his people; he was a man visibly chosen and inspired by God to conduct
his brethren into the promised land; nothing could be more natural than
the obligation that he should read and meditate on the Sacred Writings,
in order to instruct himself and teach others. And exactly in the same
manner the Catholic Church obliges all those whom God has chosen as
leaders of His people. She commands them to study and to frequently read
the Sacred Scriptures.

The good Mr. Roussy has cited against us the Book of Nehemiah; but I
believe it must have been absence of mind on his part. For the text
which he has quoted proves exactly the opposite of what he had promised
us.

Mr. Roussy had promised us, you all know, to show that each individual
person ought to have his Bible and read it for himself. To do so, he
quotes a text which informs us that not one single man or woman had a
Bible, except the priests. "And Ezra the priest brought the law
.... and he read therein before all people."

You see, Mr.Chairman, that this Ezra was no better than a Popish priest.
Instead of distributing Bibles around by thousands to everybody, as does
the cheeky Mr. Roussy, he keeps the sacred volume in his own hands, and
contents himself with reading and explaining it to the people, exactly
as Mr. Girouard, your pastor, does every Sunday.

As to the extract from Isaiah; it proves that there is something else
besides the written law, for God wishes that we should observe the
testimony as well.

Our Lord advises the unbelieving Jews to search the Scriptures;
but He certainly did not mean this as the only -- or even as the best
means of knowing Him, for these Jews would have done better according to
Jesus Christ Himself, to have believed His word and his works
(John, 5: 24, 36, 38).

The reading of the Bible, wrongly interpreted, was perdition to the
Jews, as it is to the Protestants of today. It was with the Bible in
hand, that these Jews declared that Jesus Christ was an impostor, and according
to the law, he ought to be crucified (John 19:7).

But, Mr. Chairman, I wish to refute Mr. Roussy of his own mouth, and by
his own word, prove to him that he is astray and misleads others, when
he tells them that in questions of religion they should only admit such
doctrines as can be proved by a precise text from the Bible. I wish to
make him admit the absolute necessity of having recourse to tradition,
and even an infallible tradition, under pain of not being a Christian. I
shall therefore request Mr. Roussy to reply to my questions. And you,
gentlemen, the secretaries, please write down the gentleman's exact
answers; and you my good friends (speaking to the people) listen with
great attention to the avowals I am about to draw from him.

Since you say, Mr. Roussy, that we ought to admit nothing in religious
matters, except what can be clearly proved by a text from the Bible,
will you show us the text that proves that St. Mark wrote the Gospel,
and that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, when he wrote his Gospel?

MR. ROUSSY (rising with an air of assurance): Nothing is easier, sir;
here are the very words of the Saviour, in St. Matthew (Chap. 28:19-20):
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Ghost: teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo! I am with
you always even unto the end of the world."

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Roussy will have the kindness to say to whom these
words were addressed by the Divine Saviour?

MR. ROUSSY: Jesus Christ addressed these words to His Apostles.

MR. CHINIQUY: The Secretaries will have the kindness to write that the
words which Mr. Roussy has quoted, refer only to the Apostles. Now, Mr.
Roussy, will you tell us if St. Mark was an Apostle?

MR.ROUSSY: Yes sir, St. Mark was an Apostle.

MR.CHINIQUY: The Secretaries will please write that Mr. Roussy maintains
that St. Mark was an Apostle.

MR. ROUSSY (precipitately): No, no, sir, St. Mark was not an Apostle.

MR. CHINIQUY: Write, gentlemen, that Mr. Roussy declares that St. Mark
was not an Apostle. Well, Mr. Roussy, since St. Mark was not an Apostle,
and since the text you have quoted refers only to the Apostles, it
follows, according to your own statement, that it has nothing to do with
St. Mark.

MR. ROUSSY: No sir, I was mistaken, and I admit that the text quoted
does not refer to St. Mark.

MR. CHINIQUY: Very well, Mr. Roussy, then I repeat my question before
this respectable assembly. Show us a precise text from the Bible, which
proves that St. Mark was inspired by God to write the Gospel.

Mr. Roussy rises, and commences turning the pages of his book. He is
pale, he trembles, he perspires profusely, he takes more than ten
minutes to search.

A gloomy silence reigns, only a few feeble murmurs of "He is
caught" are heard. But silence is imposed. At last the audience
is becoming impatient, and someone speaks: "Come on, Mr. Roussy,
what are you doing now?"

The gentleman appears more and more disconcerted. He replies in a
trembling voice: "Gentlemen, I beg of you to be patient, I admit I
am in very close quarters." These words were followed by a general
burst of laughter.

MR. CHINIQUY: You will find yourself in closer quarters in a minute,
sir.

MR. ROUSSY (after having searched in vain for a quarter of an hour,
falls into his seat, and says in a pitiful voice): "I am not able
to find the text I am looking for."

MR. CHINIQUY: Gentlemen, have the kindness to write that Mr. Roussy
declares himself unable to find a text from Holy Scripture which proves
that St. Mark was inspired by God to write the Gospel.

Another little question, Mr. Roussy. Since according to your religion,
one should only believe as true, what can be proved by a text from the
Holy Bible, will you find for us the text that proves that St. Luke, who
was no more an Apostle than St. Mark, was inspired by God to write the
Gospel?

MR. ROUSSY (once more rises, but his face and whole appearance indicate
a man completely broken up. He searches again for five or six minutes;
then allowing himself to fall back into his chair, exclaims): "I am
not able."

MR. CHINIQUY: Gentlemen, will you, if you please, write that Mr. Roussy
declares he "is not able" to find a text in his Bible to prove
that St. Luke wrote the Gospel.

[Then, addressing Mr. Roussy:]

Very well sir, since you declare you are not able to find a word in the
Holy Bible to assure you that St. Mark and St. Luke wrote the Gospels
that bear their names, how do you know that it was they who wrote these
Gospels?

Then, turning towards the audience, Mr. Chiniquy says, smiling:
"Listen well to his reply." A gloomy silence follows for an
instant.

MR. ROUSSY: We prove that St. Mark and St. Luke wrote the Gospels by the
miracles they wrought.

MR.CHINIQUY: Very well, show me a text from the Gospel where it states
that St. Mark and St. Luke wrought miracles.

MR. ROUSSY (rising slowly, admits that he is not able; he murmurs some
unintelligible words, then speaks with an embarrassment which he cannot
conceal): You ask me, sir, how it is known that St. Mark and St. Luke
wrote their Gospels; but, sir, that is only known by the testimony of
the early Christians.

At these words nothing is heard but exclamations of joy and the clapping
of hands. "He is convicted by his own words"; "He is
caught in his own trap", yell voices from the crowd.

MR. CHINIQUY: Yes, my friends, he is taken at his own words, and as you
say, caught in his own trap; he is forced to have recourse to the
testimony of the early Christians, that is to the Tradition of the
Church, to prove the very first of Gospel truths, the existence of the
Gospel itself. He is, therefore, forced to admit that he deceived you
just now, when he told you everything was to be found written in the
Bible, and that anything that could not be proved by some text ought to
be rejected.

MR. ROUSSY: I am not caught. It is you, Mr. Chiniquy, who have been
caught in your own trap; it is you who are convicted, for you are not
able to show us what the Church is, and what authority it has.

MR. CHINIQUY: Since Mr. Roussy does not know what the Church is, I shall
have the pleasure of telling him. The early Christians, being divided on
certain practices, followed the advice of Our Lord, and appealed to the
Church of their day, and this is what took place: (Acts 15:6) "And
the Apostles and ancients came together to consider of this matter. And
when there was much disputing, Peter rising up said to them: My
brethren, you know that in former days God made choice among us, that
the Gentiles, by my mouth, should hear the word of the Gospel,
and believe." After Peter, Barnabas and Paul were heard. Then James
speaks in his turn; but it was only to confirm what Peter had said.
Finally, the deliberation being finished, they wrote these solemn words:
"For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to
decide in such a manner the question that you have raised."

There, Mr. Roussy, that is what the Church is. That is how she spoke
1900 years ago, and that is how she speaks still, and how she still
speaks to the end of time; for she can never perish, seeing that Jesus
Christ has said: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against
her." It is this infallible Church which tells me, a Catholic, as
she told it 1900 years ago: "St. Mark and St. Luke were inspired by
God to write their Gospels", and I am certain she speaks the truth,
for it is the Holy Ghost who enlightens her. This Church, according to
St. Paul (1 Timothy 3:15), "is the pillar and foundation of the
truth." This Church, outside of which there is nothing but
falsehood and error, has been called Catholic since the time of
the Apostles, and no other church can ever bear this grand name.

This Catholic Church, to which I have the happiness to belong, is also
called Apostolic, because it is united with the Apostles by an unbroken
chain of priests, bishops and Popes, who obtain their power, by
incontestable titles, from them. This Catholic and Apostolic Church is
also called Roman, because it was at Rome that its Founder amongst men
(St. Peter) shed his blood and because it was there he deposited for his
successors the keys of Heaven, which neither demons nor heretics nor
infidels can deprive her of. "Thou art Peter and on this Rock I
will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it" (Matt. 16:16-19).

When I, a Catholic, take the Bible in my hands, I am as certain that it
is the word of God as I am certain that there is a God in Heaven,
because it is the Catholic Church (the pillar and foundation of the
truth) which tells me so.

When I read the Gospel, I read it only with a full and complete
submission to the interpretation which the Church gives me, whose voice
I am obliged to hear, under pain of being treated by God "as a
heathen and publican" (Matt., 18:17). And when I read this Holy
Gospel I call to mind the words of St. Peter (2 Peter 3:15-16): "As
also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath
written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these
things; in which, are some things hard to be understood, which
the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures,
to their own perdition."

In reading the Holy Scriptures, I call to mind that I am but a poor
ignorant man, and that if I depend upon my feeble understanding, I shall
very soon go astray; therefore I am careful to understand what I read in
the sense that the Church has always taught. For if I am bound to
believe that the Church is infallible, when she tells me that St. Mark
and St. Luke were inspired by the Holy Ghost to write their Gospels,
although I do not find a word in the Bible, according to Mr. Roussy's
admission, to prove this truth, I am bound to believe that she is in
like manner guided by the Holy Ghost, in the interpretation of the
Scriptures, which sacred treasure she alone has preserved for me
infallibly.

I have admitted to you, Mr. Chairman, that I am but an ignorant man, and
for this reason I am in need of an infallible guide in the
interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. I have no intention of insulting,
nor of wounding Mr. Roussy in any manner, but I tell you that I believe
him just as ignorant as I am, and I believe that he belongs to that
class of men of whom St. Peter speaks, when he says, the unlearned do
not understand the Holy Scriptures, and wrest them in a false sense to
their own perdition.

In spite of my ignorance and my weakness, I am assured that I shall not
go astray in the reading of the Scriptures, since I have for my guide
the Church, "the pillar and foundation of the truth",
and I take for my interpreter that Church, to whom my adorable Saviour
has said: "The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."
But I am curious to know how Mr Roussy, who is also a poor ignorant man,
can be assured of finding his salvation in the reading of the Bible,
when the prince of the Apostles assures us that the ignorant find in it
their ruin.

MR. ROUSSY: The Holy Ghost invites us to read the Sacred Scriptures, and
in consequence promises to enlighten us. Here is a text which reveals to
us, in a most evident manner, this truth: "Evil men and seducers
shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But continue
thou in the things thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing
of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child, thou hast known
the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation,
through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by
inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3: 13,
16).

Here we see St. Paul congratulating his well beloved Timothy for having
known the holy scriptures from his childhood. Therefore, we merit the
praises of God by studying the Holy Scriptures. Besides, is it not
positively stated here that all scripture is inspired by God for
instruction and correction? If all scripture is given by inspiration of
God for instruction, and correction, how can Mr. Chiniquy dare to say
that the reading of the Holy Scriptures is bad and can cause our ruin ?

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr.Chairman, I have already remarked to you that this good
Mr. Roussy was unfortunate in the choice of his texts. The one that he
has just chosen is going to destroy irretrievably his argument.

In the first place, you see, by this text, that St. Paul says
positively, "continue thou in the things thou hast learned and hast
been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." Here St.
Paul is not speaking of the Bible, nor of writings at all, he speaks of things
that have been learned, and it is very probable, or rather, it is
very certain that these things were not written, for St. Paul says to
remember them, not from the book in which he had read them, but on
account of the person who had taught them to him. And to show how far
St. Paul was from preaching Mr. Roussy's absurd doctrine, that all
things necessary to salvation are written in the Bible, it will suffice
to cast our eyes a few lines higher than the text quoted by Mr. Roussy.
St. Paul, speaking to the same Timothy, says to him: "And the
things which thou hast heard from me, before many witnesses, the same
commend to faithful men; who shall be fit to teach others also" (2
Tim. 2:2).

Yes, continue firm, says the Apostle of the Gentiles, in the things you
have learned not only by the reading of the Sacred books, but also in
the things you have "heard from me, before many witnesses."

St. Paul made use of no different language when writing to Timothy, than
he had used when addressing the Thessalonians, for he said to them also:
"Therefore, Brethren, stand firm; and hold the tradition which you
have learned, whether by word or by our epistle" (2 Thess. 2:14).
And these words of the Apostle Paul, which are the words of the Holy
Ghost himself have resounded throughout the world for 1900 years. And,
all those who have really believed in Jesus Christ have repeated them,
they believe them, and they will repeat them to the very end of time, to
the eternal confusion of infidels and innovators. "Hold the
tradition which you have learned, whether by our words or by our
writings." That has been the teaching of the Church for nineteen
centuries. That will be the teaching of the Church till the end of time;
for this Church, like the Son of God whose immaculate Spouse she is, can
never change. St. Paul was far from upholding the absurd doctrine of
modern innovators; he who says positively in his Epistle to the Romans
(Chap. 10, 13-17): "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. How then shall they call Him in whom they have not
believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And
how shall they hear without a preacher? And now can they preach unless
they be sent? Faith then cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
word of Christ."

St. Paul congratulates St. Timothy on his reading of the Holy
Scriptures, but it was because his holy disciple joined to this reading,
the most entire submission to the explanations and to the instructions, by
word of mouth, of his superiors before God. It is also in this
manner that the Church wishes her children to read the Holy Scriptures.
The absurd idea entertained by Mr. Roussy, that a knowledge of the
Gospel comes by reading alone, was so far from the thought of the
Apostle that he cries out: "How shall the nations believe in Jesus
Christ if they have not
Him spoken of, and how shall they hear Him spoken of unless some
one preaches to them?"

According to the Apostle St. Paul, therefore, the best manner, or
rather, the only means of knowing Jesus Christ is to hear of Him by
preaching, and not by reading. Without doubt, reading is not useless,
but it aids the faith of them alone, who listen to the preaching of
those who have been sent to preach. But I have told you that Mr.
Roussy was going to completely destroy himself with the text which he
has quoted for us. If I have understood this gentleman well, he has read
to us in his Bible these exact words, "All scripture is given by
inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness." Are those not the
words you have read, Mr. Roussy?

MR. ROUSSY: Yes, sir. St. Paul says: "All scripture is given by
inspiration of God and is profitable for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness."

[NOTE: This debate originally took place in the French language. The
word "scripture", in English, commonly means the Sacred
Scriptures of the holy Bible. However, in the French version of many
Protestant bibles, including the Bible used by Mr. Roussy, the word
"scripture", which is here used, is translated in a manner
equivalent to the ordinary English word "writing", in every
day use.]

MR. CHINIQUY: Mr. Chairman and all of you, gentlemen, who compose this
respectable meeting, you have heard these words from Mr. Roussy's Bible.
Well, what do you think of them? Yes, what do you think of a man or of a
religion which assures you that all writing is given by the
inspiration of God for reproof, for correction and for instruction? Up
to the present moment, you have believed that there were some books or
writings which could only defile and corrupt the heart, but Mr. Roussy
has discovered the contrary in his precious Bible.

I know of a great number of books which have been written only under the
inspiration of the most wicked passions and are calculated only to
defile and corrupt those who read them, but, Mr. Roussy assures us that
we have all been mistaken, and he proclaims that all writings are
given by the inspiration of God. You have well understood him to say
so, have you not? (voices: "Yes, yes," are heard from all
sides).

A few minutes ago, Mr. Roussy said, with emphasis, that if anyone added
anything to or took anything from the word of God - he is cursed! Well,
gentlemen, this being the case, the curse of God must surely be on those
who wrote the Bible that Mr. Roussy holds in his hands, for this Bible
is false, ridiculously false, when it says that all writing is given
by inspiration of God and is profitable for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness."

MR. ROUSSY (rising angrily): How dare you say, Mr. Chiniquy, that the
Holy Bible I hold in my, hand is false and deceptive, I defy you to
prove it; what you say is blasphemy.

MR. CHINIQUY: I am going to prove to you, sir, that what I have just
said, is nothing but the truth; your Bible is false and deceptive to an
absurd degree. It is a falsified Bible, and I am about to prove it, at
once.

Addressing a respectable farmer, named Gauthier: Sir, by whom was the
Bible I hold in my hand given to you?

MR. GAUTHIER: That Bible was given to me by a person who had it from Mr.
Roussy.

MR. CHINIQUY: Very well, Mr. Chairman, you are going to judge what
should be thought of this Protestant Bible. The Bible that Mr. Roussy
holds, says: "All writing is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for reproof, for, correction, for instruction in
righteousness." But, the Bible which I hold, and which also comes
from Mr. Roussy, does not contain this absurdity, for I read in it:
"All scripture, divinely inspired, is profitable to teach,
to correct, to instruct in justice."

MR. ROUSSY (rising in a hurry): The two sentences are the same.

MR. CHINIQUY: No, sir, these two sentences are not the same. Is it the
same thing, Mr. Chairman, and all you gentlemen who hear me; all of you
reply; is it the same thing to say, "All writing is given by
inspiration of God" — and to say — "All Scripture, divinely
inspired, is profitable to teach", etc.?

From all sides of the hall a unanimous cry is heard: "No, these two
sentences are not the same."

MR. CHINIQUY: You are right, my friends; the first of these sentences is
an absurdity, and it is only a Bible coming from the hands of Satan
himself, which could say, "All writing is given by the inspiration
of God." That sentence is infernal in character. No, no, all
writing is not inspired by God. There are many writings, there are
thousands of books inspired, by the Devil.

Besides, here are two Bibles, both from the hands of Mr. Roussy. If the
one which says "All writing (or scripture) is given by inspiration
of God" is correct, that which says "All scripture, divinely
inspired is profitable to teach" is incorrect.

The latter is copied from the authorized Catholic Bible, and if the
Methodists, in copying it, have added nothing to the true Bible, they
have taken something from the Bible which Mr. Roussy has before him.
This is as clear as sunlight; either they have added to this one the
words "divinely inspired", or they have taken them from the
other; and as both these Bibles are printed and circulated by
Methodists, for, though one claims to be a copy of the Catholic Bible,
both come from their hands; therefore, according to Mr. Roussy's words,
they are cursed by Heaven for having added to or taken from the word of
God."

MR. ROUSSY (taking up excitedly his cap and coat, and wishing to leave,
says): I don't care to argue any longer with a man who dares to tell me
that my Bible is falsified.

MR. CHINIQUY: I am not satisfied with telling you so, sir, but I prove
it. Here are two Bibles, both coming from you — one speaks in one
manner, the other in another. Consequently, one of them must be
falsified, and you are consequently publicly convicted of having
circulated a falsified Bible.

But enough on this question of the Bible and of Tradition. I have
confounded you by your own words on these questions.

Let us take up the accusation that you have brought against the Catholic
Church of having suppressed the Second Commandment of God.

Did you, Mr. Roussy, put your signature at the bottom of this letter?
[Mr. Chiniquy then showed a letter signed by Mr. Roussy, in which the
Catholic Church is accused of having suppressed the Second Commandment
of God.]

MR. ROUSSY (appearing confused and trembling): Yes, sir, it is I who
have signed that letter.

MR. CHINIQUY—Very well; then you must prove what you have stated in
this letter.

MR. ROUSSY: No, sir, you have told me that my Bible is falsified, and I
am going. (Mr. Roussy again begins to leave.)

On all sides, cries are heard of: "Don't let him escape";
"Stop him"; "You are a coward, Mr. Roussy".

It was only with great difficulty that Mr. Chiniquy and the chairman
were able to stop the noise. Order being somewhat restored, the meeting
resumed.

MR. CHINIQUY: That is not the only place where your Bible has been
shamefully falsified. Here is another of your texts, where the hand of
Satan is shown in a plainly visible manner: (Matt. 16:25): "For
whosoever wishes to save his soul, shall lose it — but whosoever shall
lose his soul for the love of me, shall find it again"

Is not this a great discovery, the finding of a soul which has been lost
for the love of Jesus Christ?

This text seemed to strike Mr. Roussy like a thunderbolt; he starts from
the platform where he was, saying: "Amongst the Latins, the soul
and the life were the same thing." These words were greeted with an
immense shout of laughter; with cries: "The coward, he is running
away; he is not able to continue the discussion", and "Stop
him from going out".

The chairman and Mr. Chiniquy succeeded in restoring order, reminding
the people they had given their word of honor not to do anything to hurt
Mr. Roussy.

While Mr. Roussy was making his escape through the crowd, a Protestant,
fearing that they would do him an injury, and wishing to protect him,
exclaimed: "Mr. Roussy is defeated, it is true, but it is not
necessary, on that account, to kill him."

[Mr. Roussy went on his way without suffering any harm.]

The text of the above debate was originally published by Charles
Chiniquy in 1851. It was later re-published in 1893 by the True
Witness, a Canadian newspaper, as a pamphlet with the title The
Two Chiniquys.

(The foregoing online version of the debate has been published through
the collaborative efforts of Jim Goodluck, Lane Core Jr., Antoine
Valentim, Richard Chonak, Sue Sims and John Pacheco.)

(Joseph George, Jr., at the time of the original publication of this
article, was chairman of the history department at Villanova University.
He received his doctorate in 1959 and is the author of several published
articles on Lincoln and the Civil War. Dr. George is presently retired. He continues to be involved with
research and writing on historical topics.)

In 1891 John G. Nicolay, Lincoln's former secretary, received a note
from Benedict Guldner, a Jesuit priest in New York, asking for
information about a "libellous pamphlet" printed in Germany.
The pamphlet, according to Guldner, was a translation of a work
"originally written in this country ... in which the author
maintains that the assassination of President Lincoln was the work of
Jesuits." Nicolay and John Hay, another former secretary to the
President, had not mentioned the allegation in their biography of
Lincoln, and Guldner wished to know if they had heard the charge and if
they considered it false. [1]
Nicolay consulted Hay, and then
replied:

To [y]our first question whether in our studies on the life of Lincoln
we came upon the charge that "the assasination of President
Lincoln was the work of Jesuits", we answer that we have read
such a charge in a lengthy newspaper publication.
To your second question, viz: "If you did come across it, did the
accusation seem to you to be entirely groundless?", we answer
Yes. It seemed to us so entirely groundless as not to merit any attention
on our part.

[2]

Perhaps the decision of Nicolay and Hay to ignore the charge of a Jesuit
conspiracy against Lincoln was unwise. A prompt and firm denial might
have prevented further publication of the story. [3]

The originator of the conspiracy theory was Charles P.T. Chiniquy, a
former Catholic priest who claimed to be a close friend and confidant of
Abraham Lincoln's. According to Chiniquy, "emissaries of the
Pope" were plotting to murder Lincoln for his defense of Chiniquy
in an 1856 trial. Chiniquy's autobiography, Fifty Years in the Church
of Rome, published in 1885, attributes remarks to the President on a
variety of subjects, particularly religion. [4]
Most of Chinquy's stories are so
foreign to what is known about the Sixteenth President that scholars
have ignored them. Nevertheless, many of the less sensational portions
of Chiniquy's reminiscences have been used by serious students of
Lincoln's life, and the most sensational passages have been widely
quoted and disseminated by writers engaged in anti-Catholic polemics.

Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy was born on July 30, 1809, in
Kamouraska, Quebec. As a young man he was ordained a priest in the Roman
Catholic church, and his labors to stamp out drunkenness caused him to
be known throughout Quebec as "The Apostle of Temperance".
[5] In
1851 he moved to Kankakee County, Illinois, to serve a colony of
French-Canadians who had migrated there. Chiniquy got into difficulty
with his bishop, resigned his position in the church in 1860, and with
some of his former parishioners established a new church. In time
Chiniquy became a Presbyterian minister and published many books and
pamphlets with an anti-Catholic theme. He also lectured extensively
throughout the United States, Europe and Australia on the evils of Roman
Catholicism. He died in Montreal on January 16, 1899. [6]

It was while he lived in Illinois in the 1850s that Chiniquy met Abraham
Lincoln. According to Chiniquy's Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,
he hired Lincoln to defend him against a charge of personal immorality;
the charge, Chiniquy said, had been brought by his enemies in the
Catholic Church. Chiniquy won the case, thereby incurring the wrath of
the Jesuits. By Chiniquy's account, when the verdict came in, Lincoln
said; "I know that Jesuits never forgive nor forsake. But man must
not care how or where he dies, provided he dies at the post of honor and
duty." [7]

Chiniquy claimed that he later met with Lincoln on three different
occasions in Washington. The first interview, he said, took place at the
White House "at the end of August" in 1861. Chiniquy had
learned from another former priest of an assassination plot against
President Lincoln, and considered it his duty to warn him. Chiniquy
reported that Lincoln received him cordially and then made the following
lengthy statement:

Your friends, the Jesuits, have not yet killed me. But they would have
surely done it, when I passed through their most devoted city,
Baltimore, had I not defeated their plans, by passing incognito, a few
hours before they expected me. We have the proof that the company
which had been selected and organized to murder me, was led by a rabid
Roman Catholic, called Byrne; it was almost entirely composed of Roman
Catholics ... A few days ago, I saw Mr. [Samuel F.B.] Morse, the
learned inventor of electric telegraphy; he told me that, when he was
in Rome ... he found out the proofs of a formidable conspiracy against
this country and all its institutions. It is evident that it is to the
intrigues and emissaries of the pope, that we owe, in great part, the
horrible civil war which is threatening to cover the country with
blood and ruins.

[8]

Also at that interview, according to Chiniquy, he was offered a position
as a secretary at the American legation in Paris, a post from which he
could not only investigate the evil designs of Napoleon III but also
travel occasionally to Rome and check on the Pope and Jesuits there.
Chiniquy declined the appointment; he offered as his reason the need to
continue his work in America. [9]

Chiniquy reported that the President was so pleased with that meeting
that he invited his visitor to return the next day. On that occasion,
Lincoln expressed his concern about a report in Democratic newspapers
that he had been born a Catholic and baptized by a priest. "I have
never been a Roman Catholic", Lincoln assured his guest. "No
priest of Rome has ever laid his hand on my head." Lincoln asked
Chiniquy if he could explain the meaning of the reports. Chiniquy
replied that the charges represented Lincoln's death sentence by the
Catholic church. Lincoln then concluded the interview by stating that he
was fighting the Civil War against the Pope and his Jesuits as well as
against the Rebels of the South. [10]

Chiniquy's second reported visit to Lincoln in Washington, according to Fifty
Years in the Church of Rome, took place at the "beginning of
June, 1862", but at that time Chiniquy could only shake hands with
his friend. The President was too busy for intimate conversation.
[11]

The third and last visit was alleged to have occurred on June 9, 1864,
the day Lincoln received official word that he was renominated for the
Presidency. The following day, June 10, the two old friends, according
to Chiniquy, visited the wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals. The
President then invited Chiniquy to the White House for a long discussion
to Catholicism. Lincoln assured his guest that the Pope and his Jesuits
were responsible for the French invasion of Mexico, the New York draft
riots, and other outrages. Lincoln also quoted appropriate passages from
the Bible and indicated that he was prepared to die for the cause of
liberty. [12] Chiniquy
then took his leave, never to see Lincoln again.

It is unlikely that any of these meetings took place. As this paper will
show, Chiniquy's autobiography contains numerous misrepresentations
about his life and association with Abraham Lincoln.

Three years after the appearance of Chiniquy's account, Justin D.
Fulton, a Baptist minister, published Washington in the Lap of Rome.
The book was dedicated "to Americans Who Will Aid in Throttling
Jesuitism, in Uncoiling the Serpent Encircling the Capitol of the United
States, and in taking Washington Out of the Lap of Rome; That a Free
Church and a Free School in a Free State May Make the Great Republic the
Glory of the World." [13]
Fulton, a prolific writer, published
a variety of books and newspapers with a religious theme. Strongly
antislavery in pre-Civil War times, he shifted his attacks to the
Catholic church after the war. One historian judged his writings
"reckless of fact and effect." [14]

Chiniquy's and Fulton's writings were the basis for several
anti-Catholic tracts published in the 1890s. During that decade as the
number of Catholics in America rose in proportion to the increasing
immigration rate, many non-Catholics became alarmed at what they
considered a danger to the United States. By 1893 the American
Protective Association -- a nativist group founded in 1887 by H.F.
Bowers, an attorney from Clinton, Iowa -- had seventy thousand members
in twenty states. APA members took an oath to vote for and hire only
Protestants. [15]

Other anti-Catholic authors also borrowed from Chiniquy. In 1893, for
example, W.H. Burr wrote The Murder of Abraham Lincoln: Planned and
Executed by Jesuit Priests.[16]
Thomas M. Harris' pamphlet Rome's
Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln denounced
Catholic schools as breeding grounds by which to "secure loyalty to
the [Catholic] Hierarchy, and to prepare the minds of its children for
disloyalty to any other power." Harris cited Chiniquy's story to
demonstrate "conclusively the hand of Rome in this stab at our
nation's life." [17]

The Chiniquy claims were repeated in 1924 by Burke McCarty in Suppressed
Truth about the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which was
"Affectionately Dedicated" to the author's "Patriotic
Mother Who Also Left Rome." McCarty credited the Jesuits with the
murders of Presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, James A.
Garfield and William McKinley, as well as Abraham Lincoln. McCarty also
accused Catholics of an attempt on the life of President-elect James
Buchanan, whom the Jesuits were alleged to have poisoned in February
1857. [18] In
discussing Lincoln's assassination, McCarty quoted extensively from
Chiniquy and added some embellishments of his own. McCarty, for example,
stated that Chiniquy visited Lincoln in Washington "once each
year." Chiniquy had claimed he was in Washington but three times.
[19]

By the time McCarty published what he called the "suppressed
truth," there was a new audience in America for anti-Catholic
literature. The resurrected Ku Klux Klan opposed American Catholics as
well as Jews, immigrants, and Negroes.

In 1921 the Rail Splitter Press of Milan, Illinois, which called itself
the "oldest, most resourceful, and most reliable Anti-Papal
publishing house in America," printed Chiniquy's charges in
pamphlet form. The press also advertised a special envelope with a
drawing of Lincoln's face and a quotation from the Chiniquy book
regarding Lincoln's fear of Catholics and Jesuits. The publisher
estimated that at least five people read each envelope; readers, he
said, should use the Lincoln envelopes to "save America" and
perform "great missionary work." [20]

In 1922 John B. Kennedy, the editor of Columbia, a Catholic
magazine, requested information from Robert Todd Lincoln about
Chiniquy's report. The reply was emphatic: "I do not know of any
literature in which my father is quoted as attacking Catholics and the
Catholic Church. Of course, in the years his name has been a peg on
which to hang many things." [21]

But even the denial by Lincoln's son could not stop the circulation of
Chiniquy's story. In 1924 the distinguished historian Carl Russell Fish
found it necessary to use the pages of the American Historical Review
to denounce an account titled "An American Protestant Protest
against the Defilement of True Art by Roman Catholicism." According
to Fish, the publication, which repeated the claims of Chiniquy's Fifty
Years in the Church of Rome, had "circulated by the
million." Fish argued that "the spirit of the [remarks
attributed to Lincoln] ... is contrary to the whole character of
Lincoln's thought and expression." Fish concluded that Chiniquy's
fabrication demonstrated the need for a definitive edition of Lincoln's
writings and sayings -- a project that would be completed almost thirty
years later. [22]

In 1928, when Al Smith, a Roman Catholic, won the Democratic nomination
for the Presidency, the Chiniquy charges were again reprinted. The Rail
Splitter Press brought out a pamphlet titled Abraham Lincoln's Vow
Against the Catholic Church. [23]
This pamphlet, like the earlier one
from the same press, was based on Chiniquy's charges.

The Abraham Lincoln Association published Lincoln's collected writings
in 1953. The nine-volume edition contained no reference to Chiniquy or
his claims regarding Lincoln's comments about the Pope, Jesuits, and the
Catholic church. [24] Yet
in 1960 when the Catholic John F. Kennedy received the Democratic
nomination for the Presidency, the Chiniquy story about Lincoln again
surfaced. One publication contained the statement that Chiniquy's
interviews with Lincoln should serve as a "warning to all Americans
who see no danger in having a Roman Catholic in the White House."
That widely distributed pamphlet was printed by the Osterhus Publishing
House of Minneapolis. The Osterhus pamphlet retold the most sensational
portions of Chiniquy's account, taken second-hand from Fulton's Washington
in the Lap of Rome. The publisher assured readers that the words
were Lincoln's, even though "self-styled Lincoln experts may tell
you the contents ... are not among his writings." [25]

In 1963 another former priest, Emmett McLoughlin, published a study of
Lincoln's assassination; he concluded that the Pope and his Jesuits were
responsible for Booth's crime. McLoughlin, too, acknowledged his debt to
Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. The author was particularly
impressed by Chiniquy's enduring friendship with Lincoln, during which
"the ex-priest visited Lincoln in the White House and frequently
warned him of the Church's antagonism and of its threats to the very
life of the President." [26]

Clearly, neither the denials by Nicolay and Robert Todd Lincoln nor the
publication of the Collected Works would stop the reappearance of
Chiniquy's charges. Fifty Years in the Church of Rome was
translated into many languages and distributed, among other places, in
French Canada, South Africa, Norway, France, New Zealand, Haiti, and
Formosa." [27]

Because Chiniquy's autobiography contains several supposedly first-hand
observations of Lincoln's religious beliefs, it has been used, albeit
cautiously, even by reputable Lincoln biographers. William E. Barton,
for example, accepted many of the less sensational portions of
Chiniquy's account, particularly the anecdotes describing Lincoln at
prayer or quoting long passages from the Bible.

Barton believed that Lincoln "trusted and believed in"
Chiniquy. Barton did not believe that Lincoln made harsh statements
about the Pope, Jesuits and Catholics, but did accept Chiniquy's version
of his 1856 trial. Barton wrote:

Lincoln believed thoroughly in the justice of his cause, and of the
bad motives of those engaged in the prosecution ... I think there is
good reason to believe that in this trial Lincoln spoke with some
severity of the ecclesiastical machinery that could be made available
for the crushing of a man who had incurred the ill will of priests.
But his words were not recorded at the time, and those who remembered
them afterward probably colored them greatly. Father Chiniquy's
account of this affair is within easy reach of anyone who wishes to
read it, and I think it is essentially truthful, though I do not
accept any such account, made from memory years afterward, as reliable
in its detail.

[28]

Barton also accepted Chiniquy's recollections of visits to Lincoln in
the White House. Barton suspected that the incidents were "colored
by the imagination" of the former priest but that the account
contained "a basis of fact in accord with what we might have
expected Lincoln to say." Barton warned, however, that the
conversations sounded "much more like Chiniquy than Lincoln."
"It is not safe," Barton concluded, "to put Abraham
Lincoln on record except in words that he is known to have written or
uttered. And to say this is not to impugn Father Chiniquy, who, I think,
intended to be truthful." [29]

Influenced by Barton's views, Lloyd Lewis unwittingly helped perpetuate
Chiniquy's claims. In Myths After Lincoln, Lewis agreed that the
disclosures were based on actual incidents but "were far more
Chiniquy than Lincoln." Lewis advanced the view that Chiniquy's
"unbalanced imagination" prompted him "to expand some
simple remarks of the President into a metaphysical monologue which,
though it retained, in all likelihood, some of Lincoln's words,
misrepresented him wholly. [30]
Emanuel Hertz followed in the Barton
tradition and frequently cited Fifty Years in the Church of Rome
as a source for Lincoln's religious views. [31]

The evidence is
conclusive that reliance on Chiniquy was unfortunate, for his claims
were baseless. Chiniquy did meet Lincoln in 1856, and he did engage
Lincoln's services as an attorney. But the facts of the trial bear
little resemblance to the account presented in Fifty Years in the
Church of Rome.

According to Chiniquy, the Bishop of Chicago, Chiniquy's superior, had
induced a land speculator named Peter Spink to bring charges of
immorality against Chiniquy in 1855. Chiniquy said that the court found
him innocent but that Spink obtained a change of venue. Chiniquy was
then re-tried, he said, at Urbana. At that time Lincoln was hired as
defense attorney and was influential in producing a key witness from
Chicago who exposed Spink as a perjurer. After the acquittal, according
to Chiniquy, Lincoln declared, "Jesuits never forget nor
forsake." [32]

The court records and attorneys' notes from that trial contradict almost
every point in Chiniquy's autobiography. The original documents show
that Spink v. Chiniquy involved little more than a personal feud
between two embittered friends. Peter Spink, the plaintiff in the case,
charged in his complaint that "on or about the 10th day of January
A.D. 1854" he was accused by Chiniquy, "in a public
assembly," of committing perjury. Apparently the public assembly
was a church service, and Chiniquy, then a priest, had announced to his
congregation that Spink, a land speculator, was advising clients to
enter public lands on which French-Canadians had cut timber. Spink's
plan, Chiniquy told his parishioners, was to make the French-Canadians
pay for the wood. Spink charged that the accusation was "false and
malicious" and had caused his clients to lose confidence in him. As
a result Spink was unable "to do business as before, wherefore he
was greatly injured and sustained great damage." Spink further
charged that the priest had "at divers times before the instituting
of this suit - slandered and defamed this deponent." Those
statements are recorded in the official complaint, "Sworn and
Enscribed," on February 3, 1855, in the circuit court of Kankakee
County. [33] The official charge
brought by Spink was slander, not immorality. The Bishop of Chicago (who
was not, in any case, Chiniquy's superior) had nothing to do with the
complaint. The trial was shifted, as Chiniquy said, from Kankakee to
Urbana, but before, not after, the first court proceedings. There was
first a mistrial, and the jury chosen for the second hearing could not
agree. Lincoln then became Chiniquy's attorney. In the words of his
friend H. C. Whitney, Lincoln "abhorred that class of litigation
[slander]," and was influential in bringing about a compromise
before a third trial. [34] A
statement of agreement, in Lincoln's handwriting, is extant. It reads:

This day came the parties and the defendant denies that he has ever
charged, or believed the plaintiff to be guilty of Perjury; that
whatever he has said, from which such a charge could be inferred, he
said on the information of others, protesting his own disbelief in the
charge; and that he now disclaims any belief in the truth of such
charge against said plaintiff -- It is therefore, by agreement of the
parties, ordered that this suit be dismissed, each party paying his
own cost -- the defendant to pay his part of the cost heretofore
ordered to be paid by said plaintiff. [35]

It is difficult to believe that Chiniquy and Lincoln would have had
reason or occasion at Urbana for a discussion of the evils of the
Catholic church -- which in any case had no connection with the trial. [36]

Chiniquy's accounts of later visits with Lincoln and discussions of
religion and fears of Catholic plots against the President's life are
equally unreliable. David Davis had warned in 1866 that Lincoln was a
"secretive man." That Lincoln would discuss his religious
views with strangers Davis considered "absurd". [37]
John G. Nicolay, writing shortly after Lincoln's
death, asserted that he had never heard Lincoln explain his religious
view's. [38] If such close
associates of the President's as Davis and Nicolay never heard Lincoln
speak of his religious views, it is not likely that Chiniquy would have
had long theological discussions with him. Moreover, there is no
available documentary evidence that Chiniquy was friendly with Lincoln
or visited with him privately in Washington.

According to Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Chiniquy visited
Lincoln in August, 1861, and June, 1862. At the first interview Chiniquy
claimed that the President not only spoke of the evils of Catholicism
but offered his friend a secretaryship in the American legation in
Paris. On September 29, 1862, three months after the second meeting was
supposed to have taken place, Chiniquy wrote to Lincoln and thanked him
for services rendered in Urbana in 1856. Nothing was mentioned of any
meeting in Washington or any offer of a position for Chiniquy in the
foreign service. The letter, preserved in the Robert Todd Lincoln
Collection in the Library of Congress, reads:

MR. PRESIDENT,

I have the honor [and] the pleasure of forwarding to You the adress of
my countrymen adopted in a meeting of our whole Colony.
Our gratitude for the good you are doing to our beloved & bleeding
Country, is increased by the great services you have rendered me
personally, in a very solemn circumstance, at Urbana, Ill.

I have then, a double reason to bless the name of Abraham Lincoln,
& to assure you of the respect & devotedness with which I have
the h[onor] to subscribe myself, Mr. President,

Yr. Nble Servant,

CHARLES CHINIQUY [39]

One finds it difficult to believe that the author of this letter was the
confidant described in Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. It is
safe to assert that the two men never shared long friendly conversations
at any time -- especially between May 23, 1856, and September 29,1862.

Chiniquy's autobiography is more specific about his reported third and
last visit to Lincoln, which, he said, took place on June 8, 1864.
According to Chiniquy, he was invited to return on June 9 for Lincoln's
official notification of renomination by the Republican party. Chiniquy
said that he attended the affair, and his descriptions of the Republican
delegations conform to the newspaper reports. [40] Chiniquy
claimed that he was invited by the President to return the following
day, June 10. On that day, Chiniquy said, the two men visited a number
of hospitals, and later at the White House had their final conversation
about the Bible and the evils of Romanism.

Chiniquy may have attended the ceremony on June 9 and may have met with
the President on June 10. If so, it was not as an old friend of
Lincoln's, however. The Robert Todd Lincoln Collection contains a letter
of June 10, 1864, from one A. Chester to the President. [41]
The letter is a request for funds for the school
operated by Chiniquy in Kankakee County. [42] In
the note Chester expresses his "high appreciation" of
Chiniquy's character and commends him to Lincoln "as worthy of your
highest confidence -- a man and a Preacher of ability and integrity whom
you cannot too much encourage." Chester is clearly not writing
about an old friend of the President's. Along with Chester's note is one
from Chiniquy, also dated June 10. It reads:

MY DEAR MR. LINCOLN,

It was my privilege, yesterday, to bless you in the name of ten [?]
thousand French Canadians settled in our Colony of Illinois. To day, I
approach you to offer you a new oportunity of doing one of the things
you like the more; and by which your life has been filled: "a
good action."

In the Providence of God I have brought some six hundred families of
my countrymen from the errors of Rome; to the Knowledge of the truth
as it is in Jesus Christ. Now, I am trying to give to the Children of
those converts the best possible Christian & American education,
and I have founded a College: "The Saviour's College" where
about 130 boys & girls are taught to serve their God & love
their country.

But, alone, I can not meet all the expenses of that new Institution.
Our Presbytery have advised me to make an appeal to our Freinds [sic]
in Washington. The eminent services you have already rendered me,
gives me, surely, the privilege of looking to you as our first &
noblest Freind.

It is then to you that we go first to get some help for the education
of that colony which has already sent more than 150 men to the defense
of the Country. 12 of them have shed their blood on the battle Fields
of the West.

No reference is made of past intimate conversations. Nothing in the
letter suggests that two old friends from the Illinois prairies might
have spent the day visiting wounded soldiers or holding a long
conversation on theology. Lincoln did visit hospitals in and about
Washington while he was President, but there is no record that he did so
on June 10, 1864. Also, he never visited more than one hospital on any
of the days listed for that activity in Lincoln Day by Day. On
the evening of June 10, 1864, the President met with Orville H. Browning
and discussed an Illinois patronage matter. [43] Lincoln
may have met with Chiniquy that evening, but there is no evidence of it.
If such an interview did occur, the subject was probably Chiniquy's
request for money.

It is clear that Charles Chiniquy met Lincoln in 1856 in Urbana and
engaged his legal services. The facts of the case differ significantly,
however, from those reported in Chiniquy's autobiography. As to the
three separate interviews in Washington, it is reasonable to assume that
the first two never took place. If a third did occur, it was for the
purpose of obtaining a charitable contribution from the President. One
may also conclude that Lincoln never offered Chiniquy a post in the
foreign service, nor did he engage the former priest in long
conversations about the Bible and assassination plots. [44]

As the by-no-means-exhaustive list of pamphlets and books cited in this
essay suggests, Chiniquy's charges against the Catholic church will be
kept alive by sectarian battlers disposed to believe what was said in Fifty
Years in the Church of Rome. [45] Scholars,
however, even when tempted to use less sensational passages from
Chiniquy's book, should be wary. There is no evidence to support his
claim that he was a close friend of the Sixteenth President.

[3] Nicolay did plan to incorporate the item in a projected volume of
spurious Lincoln quotations. After Nicolay died, his daughter gave his
notes to the Library of Congress. See, David C. Mearns, "Our
Reluctant Contemporary: Abraham Lincoln", Abraham Lincoln
Quarterly, 6 (1950), 77-78.

[4] Charles P.T. Chiniquy, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,
43rd ed. (New York: Fleming H. Ravelle Co., 1886), pp. 692-96 (all
references in this article are to the forty-third edition). The volume
was first published in 1885, in both French and English. The first
English edition was printed by the Craig and Barlow Publishing Company
of Chicago. Marcel Trudel, Chiniquy (Trois Rivieres, Quebec:
Editions du Bien Publiques, 1955), pp. xxi-xxii.
An examination of other editions of Fifty Years in the Church of Rome
reveals that the editions vary only in the dedication pages. See, for
example, the third edition--published in 1886 by William Drysdale &
Co. of Montreal--and the forty-second edition--published in 1892 by the
Craig Press of Chicago.

Chiniquy apparently was active in advertising the volume. The Illinois
State Historical Library (hereinafter cited as ISHL) owns Mr. Editor,
a broadside dated July 13, 1885, which was sent by Chiniquy to newspaper
editors. The broadside warned of the dangers of Romanism, identified
chapters about Abraham Lincoln, and requested a copy of the review when
published. In a handwritten note at the bottom of the broadside,
Chiniquy asked the editor to "give the book such criticism it
deserves."

[34] Whitney, p. 75. Spink petitioned for the change of venue; he
claimed that he could not receive a fair trial in Kankakee because of
"the prejudice of the judge." See "Petition of Peter
Spink," Nov. 13,1855, photostat, Spink v. Chiniquy File,
ISHL.

[35] "Peter Spink vs. Charles Chiniquy [1856]", Herndon-Weik
MSS. Library of Congress (microfilm in ISHL). The ISHL Lincoln
Collection contains a photostat of a second copy, mostly in Lincoln's
handwriting, but with three lines written by others, probably other
attorneys involved in the compromise settlement.

[36] ISHL does have a photostat in its Lincoln collection of the
handwritten bill for services that Lincoln gave Chiniquy. The document
reads: "Urbana, May 23, 1856 - Due A. Lincoln Fifty dollars for
value received." It is signed "C. Chiniquy."

[40] Evening Star (Washington. D.C.), June 9, 10. 1864; New
York Times, June 10, 1864; Public Ledger (Philadelphia), June
10, 1864. The account quoted in Collected Works, VII. 380-82, is
taken from the New York Tribune, June 10, 1864. All newspaper
accounts agree on essentials regarding the event.

[41] Apparently this is the same A. Chester who edited the Kankakee
Gazette from 1853 to 1856; see Collected Works, IV. 30.
Chester is known to have been a friend of Lincoln's: he was a lawyer at
one time, campaigned for Lincoln in 1864, asked the President for
political jobs for friends and himself, and provided some letters of
recommendation for people wishing to see the President. See Chester to
Lincoln, April 25, June 25, Dec. 16, 1863, and March 3, Aug. 8, Oct. 21,
Nov. 15, Dec. 8, 1864 - all in RTL Collection.

[42] Enclosed with the letter is a broadside that endorses the school
and requests funds: Alex. F. Kemp, To the Christian Public,
Montreal, May 9. 1864.

[45] The most recent pamphlet of this genre seen by the author is Father
Charles Chiniquy, The Gift (Philadelphia: Continental Press [ca.
1974]). Chiniquy was described as a "friend of Abraham
Lincoln."

(These three articles originally appeared on
Yahoo's Geocities and were preserved by P 9/2009 before Geocities pages
went offline).